What, You Thought He Was Kidding?

For some reason, a lot of people seem surprised about the scope of change that President Baracus Hubris Maximus (Hail, Ceasar!) has attempted to bring about so early in his administration.  Those budget-mocking magpies, as well as some KoolAid drunk acolytes now screeching, “Whoa, wait a minute!” with stunned disbelief in their eyes in light of some of his more dramatic moves, would be a lot funnier if they weren’t so pathetic.  He told you so.  Over and over again.  Did you think he was kidding?  Or, were you lulled into acquiescence by his transparent sleight of hand, “bipartisan”  appeasements, obviously designed as diversionary tactics for the easily fooled?

If “grassroots” mandatory volunteerism is not for you, sorry, you just weren’t paying attention.  If health care “reform,” not real Universal Health Care, is not okay by your lights, again, you slept through his stump speeches.  If you thought he meant to end all wars, or even end the one in Iraq, you just weren’t listening.  He really means to change the way “Washington does business” according to his own “post partisan” vision of how Washington’s business should be done, not according to any past model with which any particular group or entity not affiliated with him is comfortable or familiar with.  And, he plans to do it by claiming that he has your blessing.

We’re talking Barackism, here, folks.  Part Socialism, part Capitalism, part government backed Corporatism, Barackism is an amalgam of ideologies shaped and molded in his image.  Fascism?  Call it what you like, there’s a  little something for everybody to love or hate.  Of course, to accomplish his ambitious goals of “mixed income housing,” military and charter school supplemented public education, faith-based community service to government, revamped industry, and corporate partnered central banking, among other radical programs that seem to be large parts of Obacracy, you have to throw the baby out with the bathwater and start the world anew.

This will probably piss a lot of people off.  Think he cares?  Not.  Dissent expressed merely represents obstacles to be worked around, not roadblocks likely to derail his plans.  Because in every instance where resentment is met, regardless from which quarter it comes, he can always say, “I told you so.”  He doesn’t think in terms of Republican and Democrat, you do.  Left, right, center, schmenter, he doesn’t care about those labels at all.  Progressive, conservative, these are merely conveniently self-applied designations allowing him to craft appropriate methods of pacification.

That’s why the undercarriage of his bus is so well populated with such diverse occupants.  All are expendable.  You’re either with him, or you’re subject to be run over. No one is guaranteed a seat merely because their self-interests are served by doing his bidding while riding his coattails.  Ask Howard Dean.  And Pepsi. (see below)

That’s why his campaign was so ruthless, he has a single-minded plan he is determined to execute by any means necessary.  Ask Alice Palmer, or Blair Hull.  Or Hillary Clinton.

Whether Obacracy is his idea alone, or more likely, an intricate game plan implemented by an as yet unidentified cabal for which he fronts, or, less likely, even assembled, is open to debate.  However, there is no question, at least in my mind, that the sweeping “change” program beginning to come into focus, is the same one he’s been touting between administering massive hopium doses all along.  Divert attention, hit ‘em where it hurts when they’re not looking, divide and conquer, push the envelope, exploit the system in place until you can change it, tell ‘em what they want to hear while you sugar coat the things they don’t, these are the all too familiar tactics laid out in the opening chapter of the Obacrat playbook. Whether he wrote the book or was hired to sell it, is of absolutely no importance; unless people wake up to what they signed on for when they voted for him, it’s the rule book we’re all going to have to live by for a while.  Might as well listen when he drops hints about what’s in it.

“Change” is not, nor can it ever be considered, a lie if you neglect to insist upon specifics.  Let’s face it, the ability to hide your agenda in plain sight while you play your cards close to the vest in order to trick sheeple into thinking things not in their best interests are the ones they want most in the world, and, their idea to boot, is a pretty frickin’ neat trick.

No Pepsi, No Poetry

While doing my daily web surfing, I came across two totally unrelated, yet disturbingly compelling, Obama-related articles.  The first concerns the Obama staff’s apparent rejection of the product manufactured by a company that clearly tied its rocket to his star, Pepsi.  Not only was Pepsi’s CEO, New York Federal Reserve Board and Trilateral Commission member, Indra Nooyi, a prominent member of the man Slate Magazine once called The Pepsi Candidate’s campaign finance committee, and, who has been petitioned for by USINPAC as a possible Commerce Secretary in the Obama administration, an undeclared, stealth supporter, her company’s newly revamped logo and ad campaign, Refresh Everything, was rolled out during the Super Bowl and touted throughout the interminable inaugural season.  However, it seems that Pepsi and Nooyi, like many other people and entities whose proximity to the Polished Politician deceived them into believing in a reciprocity of affection and commitment that doesn’t exist, are headed for their previously assigned seats under the Obabus.  He’s just not that into them.

Poor Indra.  She assumed that because she had been invited to a few conferences and dinners, that the Celebritician would serve as a quasi-spokesmodel for her company on the sly.  Uh-uh.  He might toss a few Aquafinas to a few fainting Bobbysoxer Beatlemania redux Benny Hinn rejects while on tour campaigning, but that’s probably only because Nooyi generously provided them.  Seems when he and his crew are picking up the Tab, they choose the company that makes it; Coke.

Time Magazine’s Michael Scherer asks the question, “Is Pepsi actually the choice of the Obama administration,” then proceeds to answer himself with a resounding, “Hell to the naw!”   Not only do Obacrats stock their private refrigerators and staff meetings’ coolers with Diet Coke, so they can parade around sucking down the stuff at every available opportunity, they staged a mini-rebellion against PepsiCo’s monopoly on transition team office vending machines, and chipped in to stock a fridge with Coke rather than run to the corner store every time they wanted to avoid the offered Pepsi.

Oh, well, can’t say I feel sorry for the used and abused, undercarriage-headed corporation and their dice-rolling CEO; having never boarded the Obama Line Express myself, and thus, unable to be kicked off and to the curb and told to roll under or get run over, like Indra, I can’t help but feel a little smug and superior.  She seems like a nice lady and all, but, no better for her.

The second web article that caught my attention might have saved Pepsi’s boss some angst had she been privy to the information it contained before she leapt aboard the B&O.  It’s not surprising that the obscure publication originally publishing the pertinent document passed her by; it deserved to.  I came across it through rather convoluted means, myself.

While perusing Buzz Tracker, I came across a Free Republic (yeah, yeah,) post about Obama’s attempts at poetry during his Occidental College years.  Clicking the posted link, I was redirected to a March, 2007 Occidental Weekly article about two poems published by the publication in the spring of 1982.  The lights on the diodes of my tinfoil hat began to blink, sputter and come to life when I read that, since Obama left Occidental in 1981, as far as I know, so why were they printing his poetry after he was gone?  In 1982, Obama was at Columbia University, where he ended up after traipsing around Pakistan after visiting his mother who was working for Timothy Geithner’s father in Indonesia the summer before.  But, that was my last post.  Anyway, it’s not even like the poem was good, or anything.  As you would expect of a paper called Occidental Weekly, the author and quoted sources don’t agree with me.

I’m weeping, here.

As I’ve said before, I’m not much of a poetry fan, to put it mildly.  To be perfectly honest, I hate poetry.  Sorry, “Ode To Insignificant” paean lovers; no disrespect, but that’s where we have to agree to disagree.  Still love you, though.  Anyway, most PUMAs are aware of the first “poem” referenced in the article, “Underground;” the praise song of fig-eating apes has been printed before, and, the consensus of opinion I’ve read, is that once is more than enough, so I’ll pass on that one.  The other, “Pop,” a psychological peek into his difficult relationship with his maternal grandfather, is, well…could be, I suppose, considered by some to be somewhat interesting for what it reveals.

Pop

By Barack Obama

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken

In, sprinkled with ashes,

Pop switches channels, takes another

Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks

What to do with me, a green young man

Who fails to consider the

Flim and flam of the world, since

Things have been easy for me;

I stare hard at his face, a stare

That deflects off his brow;

I’m sure he’s unaware of his

Dark, watery eyes, that

Glance in different directions,

And his slow, unwelcome twitches,

Fail to pass.

I listen, nod,

Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,

Beige T-shirt, yelling,

Yelling in his ears, that hang

With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling

His joke, so I ask why

He’s so unhappy, to which he replies…

But I don’t care anymore, cause

He took too damn long, and from

Under my seat, I pull out the

Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing,

Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face

To mine, as he grows small,

A spot in my brain, something

That may be squeezed out, like a

Watermelon seed between

Two fingers.

Pop takes another shot, neat,

Points out the same amber

Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and

Makes me smell his smell, coming

From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem

He wrote before his mother died,

Stands, shouts, and asks

For a hug, as I shink,* my

Arms barely reaching around

His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ’cause

I see my face, framed within

Pop’s black-framed glasses

And know he’s laughing too.

Okay, there you have it.  Watermelon seed, pee stained shorts, and awkward hugs after smelling each other’s funk, obviously, a loving relationship make.  Maybe that almost former mayor guy in Los Alamitos, who sent the Obama and the Watermelon patch email to a black colleague he assumed wouldn’t take offense at, had read this poem.  Or maybe he was trying to open an honest discussion about race without cowardice.

Or, maybe the wheels on the bus just keep rollin’ along.

The Obama Geithner Connection

Okay, girls and boys, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.  As regular readers are well aware, Yours Truly is not afraid to don protective clothing and venture forth into the nether regions of TinFoilVille, Obamerica.  Today, I ask you to set aside your skepticism, grab your shiny chapeau, and join me on yet another trek into another dimension, across the line to the Dark Side.  Nothing more is required of you than to sit right back and hear a tale; just mentally follow me as I wind up the Way Back Machine to a land far, far, away, once upon a time, back to the future.  Be not afraid, my pretties, this won’t hurt a bit.  So, put on your high heel sneakers and your red dress, baby; slap that foil-wrapped wig-hat on your head and…okay, enough.  You get the idea; hell, you’ve had it all along, I just felt like messing with you.

Did you know that Turbo Tax Timothy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG, tc) is the son of Peter Geithner, former Ford Foundation head of the Indonesian region’s microfinance program, which formerly employed one S. Ann Sutoro, Program Director, and Mother of the Obamessiah?  Betcha didn’t.  Well, didja know that when Son of Stanley was going to school in Los Angeles, he went with a Pakistani friend to visit his mother in Indonesia, who was working for TTTG, tc’s father at that time, then spent a couple weeks in Pakistan, before he abruptly transferred to Columbia in New York where TTTG, tc’s dad was headquartered?   Now, you do.  How’s that Jiffy Pop hat fitting now, huh?

According to this Columbia.edu website, Daddy TTTG, tc is also the recipient of the Royal Thai Government Order of the White Elephant.  The plain vanilla site offers no elucidation as to why a Harvard advisor is being featured, nor does it explain why a White Elephant award is a good thing, but hey,  I found it on Google, as is.  If you leave off the letter scramble at the end of the address line, it takes you to Columbia U.’s website, but that’s all I know.  I told you I’d show you around the madhouse, I never said I could explain what it meant.  Sue me.

Peter F. Geithner is an advisor to the Asia Center at Harvard University and a consultant to the Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium, Rockefeller Foundation, Sasakawa Peace Foundation, and other organizations. He serves on the boards of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, the China Center for Economic Research (Peking University), the Center for the Advanced Study of India (University of Pennsylvania), Clemente (Holdings) Asia, Inc., and the Institute of Current World Affairs.

Mr. Geithner was with The Ford Foundation for 28 years, where he held program management positions mainly concerned with Asia. He was Director of Asia Programs from 1990 to 1996. Prior to assuming that position, he served for two and a half years as the Foundation’s first representative in Beijing, China. His earlier assignments with the Foundation included Program Officer in Charge, Developing Country Programs (New York), Representative for Southeast Asia (Bangkok), Deputy Head, Asia Pacific (New York), and Deputy Representative for India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka (New Delhi).

Prior to joining The Ford Foundation, Mr. Geithner served with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Washington, D.C. He was also Assistant to the President of a private international company, and served for four years as a Naval Aviator.

Mr. Geithner is a graduate of Dartmouth College (BA) and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (MA). He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a recipient of the State Department Distinguished Service Award, and the Royal Thai Government Order of the White Elephant.

Anyway, that info is obviously dated.  Though Pops Cheat is a pretty interesting guy, he’s now retired from giving away other people’s money to future president’s moms to give away, and is currently president of LAFF.  No, I am not making this up.  I read it in the New York Times, so  I know it’s true:

LAFF, which stands for Life After the Ford Foundation, is an alumni association for former foundation employees. It is perhaps the first such organization in the philanthropic community and has inspired former employees of other charities to form their own groups.

The LAFF Society, which holds reunions and other get-togethers in various regions, has 375 to 400 members on its mailing list, said Peter Geithner, its president. “I don’t think we’ve reached our full potential by any means,” he said.

Papa G.’s obviously rather unconventional style gives him a lot in common with the ObaMama, considered to be a pioneer in the field of anthropological microfinance for underprivileged Asian women.  Though from far different backgrounds, both parents afforded their sons with globe-trotting, exotic childhoods, culminating in Peter’s cheater playing Robin to Stanley Ann’s OBatMan.  Small world, huh?

According to The Atlantic, young Timmy’s experiences at Dear Old Dad’s knee in Asia, even in China during the Tiananmen Square uprising, greatly influenced his life choices:

First, his Asia background.  Geithner’s father, Peter Geithner, was a development specialist who opened the Ford Foundation’s China office – the first foreign NGO here, under a special agreement that continues to this day.  That was just before Tiananmen Square, and the father was part of the Foundation’s difficult but, ultimately, undoubtedly correct decision to remain engaged.  Tim apparently also studied Chinese, was posted in Tokyo for Treasury, and focused on Asia studies as undergraduate and graduate student.  This is all great background for Treasury’s international dealings in the coming years.

Yeps, it might be real great for our international money dealings given the amount of foreign investment in our current financial infrastructure; you know, the one the Boy Wonder and the Caped Crusader are so intent upon demolishing to the studs in order to rebuild with the blessing of their UniParty predecessors and evil PuppetMasters?  Oh, yeah, baby, I told you, TiFoilVille, sugar, start the scary Twilight Zone music, now!

We don’t even need the Vast Right Wing Conspiracies to enjoy the deliciously wicked implications of the tangled web that pulling the Geithner/Sutoro knot unravels.  Just knowing that former Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson was just named a “distinguished visiting scholar” at the same Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) that his successor, TTTG, tc, graduated from in 1985, like his daddy before him, is enough to fire up the electrodes on my headgear.  There’s plenty of synapse snapping, corroborating info from so-called “legitimate” sources to keep the old juices flowing like a teenage Madonna’s in the high school football team’s locker room.  And ObaBuddy George Clooney’s dad, Nick’s upcoming March 4, SAIS screening of his and ObaFluffing son, George’s “A Journey to Darfur” documentary is just a little bit of spicy seasoning for the witch’s brew.

A simple peek at Wikipedia’s TTTG,tc entry will tell you about his childhood, education, his DaDa’s relationship with Obama’s mama, his own cozy relationship with Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, as well as his position on the Council on Foreign Relations and membership in the Group of 30, all good places to start on the Yellow Brick Road of TinFoilia.  While we’re in town, stop by Logistics Monster’s place and have a good look around, see if we’re in the right place.

TTTG, tc’s New York Fed bio and the profile on the Treasury Dept. website are a little sketchier, but they back up the basics.  Biography.com backs up the Paulson and Bernanke associations, and his involvement in the G-10, the Rand Corporation, the Economic Club of New York, and the Center for Global Development.  Huff’n'Puff sings the praises of his Daddy-O’s legacy of Microcredit.  However, for some strange reason, the International Herald Tribune tries to make it seem that when the soon-to-be Spokesmodel-in-Chief and the hapless TaxMaster met in October and became “smitten with” and “fell in love with each other” they were both unaware of the prior relationship between their respective Parental Units, as unlikely as that may be, given that Geithner was rumored to be the odds on favorite for Treasury Secretary long before that due to his integral position on Obie’s Campaign Finance Committee.  More tinfoil for that red flag, anyone?

The story of Obama’s Mama and her role in assisting Indonesian women get small loans from banks for pots, looms scrap iron and such, which to be fair, often greatly improved these women’s lives and earning potential, is pretty well documented.  If you get a chance, be sure to pick up her dissertation, Peasant Blacksmithing in Indonesia, I hear it’s a real page turner.  Even Wikipedia is useful in informing us of her various personas, manifested throughout her life via her multiple monikers.  Stanley Ann Dunham’s life was markedly different in a lot of ways than that of  S. Ann Sutoro.  It is through this entry that we learn that Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Dunham met her second husband, Lolo Sotoero, at the East West Center on the University of Hawaii Campus.  Ann Dunham had met her son’s father, Barack Obama, Sr., on the same campus years earlier, that time in a Russian language class.  She seems to have had a thing for men who work for oil companies, too, since ObaOne worked for Shell and Lolo worked for Mobil.  The two profiles of Obama, Sr. here and here give interesting background on both parents and their influence on their son, but from wildly different perspectives.

Bloomberg has a rather unflattering look into Obama’s Indonesian years, but ABC News‘ reportage of the moment on the campaign trail when Perpetual Candidate Obama revealed his foreign policy qualifications a being his life in and travels to Indonesia and Pakistan that gives us the piece that makes the puzzle whole.  I told you at the top that Timothy Geithner’s father, Peter was with the Ford Foundation and oversaw a program with which S. Ann Sutoro was intimately involved.  The links I provided show that the years involved were those between 1981 and 1983.  From ABC News:

Apparently, according to the Obama campaign, In 1981 — the year Obama transferred from Occidental College to Columbia University — Obama visited his mother and sister Maya in Indonesia. After that visit, Obama traveled to Pakistan with a friend from college whose family was from there. The Obama campaign says Obama was in Pakistan for about three weeks, staying with his friend’s family in Karachi and also visiting Hyderabad in Southern India. (emphasis mine)

I guess the future Savior of All That’s Good and Holy in the Free World must have juuuuuust missed his future Sidekick-to-be, huh?  Imagine that.   And, he probably was planning to transfer out of Occidental, anyway, don’t ya think?  That little side trip to Pakistan was probably something like a Spring Break thing, right?  Sure.

Okaaay-dokaaay, boys and girls, time to say the magic words, “Twizzle twazzle twuzzle, twome, time for this one to go home.”  Wow, wasn’t that fun?  Maybe next time we get together we can go to the Nepotism Club on Rahm Emanuel Street.  Or, maybe we’ll stop by Skadden Arps, or one of the other tinfoil lawfirms or, visit one Omerica’s many fine University campuses.  Isn’t it great to know that TinFoilVille is not the only fun place in Obamerica?  Just about any street you go down there has just oodles and scadoodles of fun things to see and do.

So, take your time, follow the links down the side streets and alleyways where ever they may lead.  Don’t be scared, there’s no real danger, well, okay maybe a little, but not nearly as much as there is if you don’t go exploring and see for yourself.  Even if you do find yourself at a dead end, don’t panic, the way back is clearly marked.  And, who knows, you might find a whole new puzzle to solve!

See you next time, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.  And remember, “through the years we’ll all be friends, wherever we may be…

M-I-C-…see ya real soon!

K-E-Y…why?  Because we like you!

M-O-U-S-Eeeeee-eeeeeeee!”

What If The Obama Dog Isn’t A Moose?

What if the Obama family dog isn’t a moose?  That’s what Michelle Obama wants to know.  What I’d like to know is, wtf does that mean?  Doesn’t the First Lady have multiple degrees?  Even if she did have to prove she was good enough to get into college, shouldn’t she have at least learned that a dog can never be a moose by the time she got out?  Okay, I’m being snitchy, (snarky bitchy) but, maybe Blackie O should think a bit more before she opens mouth and inserts foot.

The moose/dog question arises in an interview with People Magazine about the dog the President and his wife have been promising their poor, deprived children “for years” (according to Michelle herself).  And, the poor kids still aren’t going to get their pet until April Fool’s Day (the day the rest of us get our tax cuts, btw) at the earliest.  Mommie and Daddy Dearest haven’t yet even settled on a breed.

Though the Huxtables-in-Chief claim to have narrowed their potential choices for this so far mythical dog down to a decision between a Portuguese water dog and a Labradoodle, they’re already trying to name it.  I suggest Harvey, since so far it’s invisible, and a giant rabbit dog makes just as much sense as a moose dog, but the Addams Family has other (bad)  ideas:

“Oh, the names are really bad. I don’t even want to mention it, because there are names floating around and they’re bad,” Mrs. Obama says with a laugh. “You listen and you go – like, I think, Frank was one of them. Frank! Moose was another one of them. Moose. I said, well, what if the dog isn’t a moose? Moose. I’m like, no, come on, let’s work with the names a little bit.”

Them Obamas be so intelligent.  I told you she said a moose was a dog.  You thought I was just being mean, didn’t you?  That’ll teach you to doubt me.

I wouldn’t even be writing about the Obamas and their stupid non-dog if there was anything else in the news besides, The Speech That Saved The World And Cured Cancer.  Yeah, sure, there’s the Obama Wants A 634 Billion Dollar Down Payment On A 10 Year Unspecified Health Care Thingy, but, it’s unspecified so, what’s to talk about?  The 3 Trillion Dollar Budget That Ate the World, it’s supposed to come out of?  I’d rather talk about the pseudo dog.

I guess you’d have to expect the world to be all a-Twitter about a vague speech so powerful it could knock the “catastrophic” state of our economic “crisis” right off the front pages, even when no matter who says what, stocks are still down and people who keep getting laid off still can’t pay for their overpriced houses.  But that’s what happens when you give a State of the Union speech that’s not really a State of the Union speech and still honor the time tested tradition of schmoozing with the media before a State of the Union address, even if it isn’t one for real.

When this supposed time-honored tradition of having off the record, pre-speech gourmet spin-fests began exactly is anybody’s guess, though The Wahington Post claims that they date back to Clinton:

George W. Bush and Bill Clinton routinely had the anchors over for lunch on State of the Union day.

While all reports from “journalists” who attended, like George Stephanoupolis and Katie Couric agree that the purpose of these “just between us” gatherings is for the president to chew the fat informally and run his ideas up their flagpoles, the ground rules specify that the events can only be reported broadly, with no direct attribution allowed.  In other words, the president greases up his fluffers.

Such chatty get-togethers haven’t always been seen to be so acceptable, however.  At one time, any overture to the press by the president was met with skepticism and suspicion.  An April 12, 1989 Maureen Dowd column about the subject derisively questions George H. W. Bush’s motives for issuing such untrustworthy invitations.  But, then again, it is Maureen Dowd:

Some reporters say such private contacts give them additional insights. But many other journalists and media critics are skeptical, remembering the Camelot days when John F. Kennedy’s courtship of reporters seemed to turn many of them into cheerleaders, and the tense days when Lyndon B. Johnson tried to build support for the Vietnam war with intense, personal persuasion of the press corps.

In both cases, many journalists worried afterwards that they may have crossed the line from journalism to advocacy.

Ha, ha, ha!  Crossed the line?  Oh, MoDo, honey, that line has been completely erased by the Tickle Me President!  These guys, and gals, would sell their mothers into white slavery for a chance to lick this guy’s plate.  They can’t wait to write breathtaking exposes about his favorite movie and how his socks smell.  Rock stars can’t get as much tail as our Spokesmodel-in-Chief could get from any one of these “reporters” with just a wink and subtle head nod.

They’re not the only ones, either.  Even CNN’s ObaLover, Anderson Cooper, had to put aside his own desire to get him some ObaMan in order to ridicule those members of Congress who waited up to 12 hours to get an aisle seat for the Speechapalooza Tuesday night:

You wanna talk pathetic? How about a hotshot cable news yacker mocking a New York congressman for being excited about his President?

That’s the response of veteran Bronx Rep. Eliot Engel, who was ridiculed by CNN host Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night for staking out a choice aisle seat 12-1/2 hours in advance for President Obama’s address to Congress.

“It’s like waiting for, like, Madonna tickets or something. It was  … kind of pathetic,” Cooper snarked as legislators swarmed Obama after the speech for handshakes and autographs.

Brian Williams wrote about a September ‘07 George Bush lunch summons to the press which was markedly different in tone than the self-congratulatory love note he wrote about scoring a seat at the left hand of the ObaFather.  Wolf Blitzer’s take on his luncheon with W last year was pretty generic, even though the Houston Chronicle said there was a bomb threat at the White House that day.  The Weekly Standard said the man was psychotic.  But then, according to Fred Barnes whose version of an earlier SOTU luncheon with Bush in 2005 is recounted in his book “Who Gives A F*ck” (that’s not the real name, I just see no reason to promote Fred barnes’ book) Georgie Porgie wasn’t exactly happy to see them:

“Why do I have to go to this meeting?” Bush asks his communications director, Dan Bartlett. “It’s traditional,” Bartlett explains.

Nope, it seems this new Mutual Admiration Society Obama has going with his news hoochies is unique, and uniqely beneficial and powerful for all concerned.  He schmoozes, they swoon, everybody’s happy.  For the price of a lunch, or dinner for those whose pants he wants entree into, or an hour of face time with those ‘ho’s already in his clutches, and thus, obviously secure in their place in his heart, Obama merely has to ensure that the compliant members of his audience agree to do the Hokey Pokey every time he follows the “pause” direction in his script as he reads the words of the Cardboard Titty Groper aloud on TV, to ensure that the ObaLovers will do eveything in their power to see to it that his act always plays in Peoria.

Crisis, schmisis.

And you wonder why I’d rather write about the Mythical Moose Dog.

A Generated Crisis

“Gird your loins,” Biden told the crowd. “We’re gonna win with your help, God willing, we’re gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It’s like cleaning the Augean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than – think about it, literally, think about it – this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systemic problem we have with this economy.” – Joe Biden, October 20, 2008

When now vice-president, then Senator Jo(k)e Biden (D-Mastercard) made his less than cryptic remarks about the possible scenarios facing his running mate should he be elected, his comments were largely passed off as yet another, “Oh, Uncle Joe’s found the brandy, again” moment and not really given the scrutiny they deserved.  However, in light of ensuing developments, perhaps we should take a closer look at Jo(k)e’s “off-the-cuff” campaign rhetoric.

The first part of Biden’s “mark my words” statement was generally seen to be in reference to foreign policy:

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

However, everything after “gird your loins” was clearly economic in nature.  Could a “generated economic crisis” have been what he was talking about all along?  The events I explored in an earlier post, “Inside The Wall Street Whisper Campaign” could certainly add kerosene-type fuel to the bottled acetylene torch Molotov cocktail of that kind of speculation.  The possibility that Obama’s scripted response to the global economic crisis we now face represents the validity of Biden’s now-prescient warning, and indicates that the first few weeks of their joint administration are rather smoothly proceeding according to plan, somehow doesn’t seem as far-fetched to me as one might reasonably expect.

Watching and reading the initially gushing, yet, now more tempered, media reviews of President Black Obama’s not really a State of the Union speech that they keep calling a State of the Union speech even though it was really just a Getting to Know You speech to the joint Congress that he’s supposedly been working with since he’s been president to pass the historic legislation he read to them about from a TelePrompTer, I get the feeling the rest of the country and I, or, in ObaSpeak, me and everybody else, are living in parallel universes.

It was a speech.

Period.

Not even a particularly well delivered one, either, and I don’t care how many people try to tell me otherwise.  Barack Obama is just not a dazzlingly brilliant speaker.  In fact, as I’ve said before, he’s not even that good.  His head-swiveling, squinty-eyed, nose-in-the-air, stumbling, boy-stood-on-the-burning-deck delivery is not only annoying, if it passes for anything more than mediocre, that only shows just how far we, as a nation have lowered our intellectual standards and expectations.  Frankly, the man sucks.

That’s why listening to “bubble-headed bleach blondes” and their multi-hued comrades in arms on what passes for “news” wax idiotic through endless cycles about not only the new President’s oratorical skill, but his verbal healing powers, is in itself, a Herculean exercise in restraint.  To listen to them tell it, merely forming words aloud imbues him with abilities, strengths and unlimited gifts not just far beyond those of mortal men, but those of a leader begotten of a beneficent God.

Forget “laying hands,” “open mouth” cure cancer.  “Clear debt.”  Debt, be gone.  It is spoken, so it is done. Whooosh!  I know I feel better.

Not.

If I remember correctly, on Monday, the world sucked.  Our banks were broke and only going through the motions of normal functioning.  They were on life support, even though they had already been pronounced dead.  Their rotting corpses were infecting global markets, and we were facing the end of the world as we know it.  Then, yesterday, Obie made a speech.  Now, all is right with the world, the sun has come out, the sky has opened up, a light is shining…you get the idea.  No wonder Oblahblah has such reverence for “just words.”

After forcing myself to read the transcript of this miraculous speech that I couldn’t sit through to its conclusion, due to the fact that, between the constant  jumping up and down of the elderly in the audience, cruelly insisted upon by the ObaTurfers insistent upon making “good TV,” and the excruciating drone of the vapid Spokesmodel-in-Chief, I was not only having trouble keeping my dinner down, I was getting dizzy and genuinely afraid for my mental health when I realized something.  This “outside looking in” feeling I have, while at the same time being “in it, but not of it,” is akin to being the only one at a Creeple People on Mars Meet the Three Stooges cartoon movie marathon who was sitting outside on the porch when the bong went around.  Under those circumstances, folks get pissed off at people who point out how stupid the whole situation, including the movie, is, too.  And, they tend to get downright nasty if you refuse the bong that would bring you their level of “clarity” and “enjoyment” the next time around.  They never even seem to appreciate it when you point out that your leaving the room doesn’t make the movie any better.

I’m sorry, but there’s not enough KoolAid flavored Boone’s Farm and hopium smoking in the world to make me believe that “just words” can solve a “generated crisis” of “cleaning the Augean stables” proportions overnight.  Unless the “generated crisis” itself was only “just words” from the beginning, the Creeple People are still on Mars this morning, and we all need a deep bong hit to make it funny.

Fraudulently generated cheerleading of an inartfully articulated bogus rah-rah response to a possibly “generated crisis” so at odds with reality, is what we’ve been trained by the media and the Obama administration to expect and accept as sufficient.

And that’s a truly frightening wonder to behold.

We may not “be quitters,” but Obama and Co. should really cut it out.

*NOTE: I got the Biden (D-Mastercard) idea thing from Chicago Tribune’s John Kass.  He does that kinda thing alla time.

Breaking Down “The Speech”

The following is what President Black Obama said tonight in his State of the Union speech that wasn’t a State of the Union speech to Congress.  Okay, it’s not exactly what he said, but, it’s what it amounted to.

Hey, y’all, thanks for letting me interrupt your regularly scheduled programming.  First of all, you don’t need me to tell you your life sucks.  And, any idiot could figure out that the reason your life sucks is because the economy’s in the crapper.  But, hey, you’re not the only one, the whole country sucks, and, on top of that, it’s broke, so get over yourself, everything’s going to work out.  Eventually.  It always does, whether we do anything constructive or not.  I, for one, am banking on that.  (ha, ha, banking, ha…ahem) I mean, things look really, really bad right now, and they are, but c’mon, I didn’t do it, so don’t blame me.  The air is dirty enough to kill you, duh, we use a lot of oil, what do you expect?  You can’t afford to go to the doctor, anyway.  Your kids can’t afford to go to better schools than the ones we provide, but, no biggie, there aren’t any jobs to prepare them for, so what’s the point?  And, since the last people in charge before I got here spent your money even more stupidly than you did yourselves, are you really surprised the shit is hitting the fan, now?

Somebody’s got to do something to fix stuff, that’s for sure.  Since I don’t really have a clue, I asked Congress to come up with a plan.  They said this American Recovery and Reinvestment Act thing is the best they could do.  Again, not my fault.

Basically, they passed the buck to the “private sector” y’all seem so fond of.  Humph, if it was up to me, I’d just put everybody on my payroll, but I’m told that’s not the way we do things here.  What-ev-er.  I guess y’all got some kinda “thing” for middle men.  So, anyway, what we’re going to do is, give some of them a buncha money to hire some of y’all to build stuff, and do stuff, and we’re gonna pay for it by cutting your taxes.  Neat, huh?  That oughta work.  You should start seeing your cut on April Fool’s Day.  On top of that, we’re gonna give everybody a $2,300 dollars tuition break out of the $10,000+ a year it takes to send your stupid kids to college, so they can compete for the menial jobs that are gonna be left when all is said and done.  Everybody else will get unemployment.  We’re gonna give you health coverage, too, sooner or later.  Somehow.

I know summa y’all are prolly going, “Say, what?  What’s up with that?”  I know, I know, (singsong) you’ve heard it all before.  But listen, this time I mean it.  Think I’m kidding? Ask Jo(k)e.  Biden.  Hell-o-o?  The vice-president?  Yeah, him.  He’s gonna be in charge of watching folks spend the money I’m giving them, ’cause, well, frankly, nobody knows what else to do with him, and mayors and governors steal.  Jo(k)e should know, so who better to show ‘em how?  And, if he screws up…don’t laugh…c’mon, be nice…like I was saying, if he, or anybody else, screws up, just go to my website and you can let me know just how they did it.  Hell, the way y’all love me, if they’re too stupid  not to make it obvious enough to piss you off, they deserve to be…written about on a website.

Now, this is just the beginning, ’cause, speaking of Jo(k)e, the credit system in this country sucks weenies.  Now, I know you know, guys like Jo(k)e and me have been robbing the credit system blind forever, just like the folks who paid our way here paid us to, but, never fear, we promise to keep printing money and giving it to them now that we’re in charge.  So, even though the credit rates are higher than I used to get in college, (wooooo hooooo) it’s okay, we got your back.  After all, as long as we can keep moving numbers from one column to another, everything’s cool.  Let’s be honest, though, the only reason we’re in this mess is ’cause y’all fuc screwed up and paid too much for houses you knew weren’t worth that much just ’cause my bosses made it easy for you to, so there’s only so much bitchin’ I’m gonna listen to from you.  Now that you can’t pay for all the stuff you bought, my buddies really don’t want to give up any more to the likes of you.  Can you blame them?  They only have so much, and, until they get all of it, I can tell you, they ain’t gonna just give much of it away, you know.  Hell, they don’t even trust each other, know what I mean?  Sheet.  They’re only doing this much  ’cause I co-signed for y’all.  So, I promise to keep giving them enough for them to loan you even more money, so you can buy even more overpriced stuff you still really can’t afford, and let them keep what they already stole have.  They earned it.  And, that’s just the way the system rolls, dig?  Again, don’t blame me, I’m just the messenger.

But, don’t trip, like I just told you, we’re gonna watch ‘em.  They won’t be able to use the extra money they get from us for fun stuff, anymore, like planes and drapes, only I can do that…(I can?  All right, sweeeet!  Glad I read that part.  God, I love this job!)  Anyway, like I said earlier, none of this is my fault.  The last Dillinger Gang before ours was the one that first came up with the Rip Off the People for the Banks Plan that I voted for, not me, okay?  In fact, I was pissed, too. (I was?  Oh, yeah.)  Damned straight, I was, just as pissed as you!  (tee hee…ahem)  Where was I?

Oh, yeah, right.  I’m pissed.  But hey, let’s let bygones be bygones, ‘cuz after all, we’re all on the same side.  Not you, silly, me and that last Dillinger Ga…(huh?  Oh, ooops.)  All right, listen, you American people, I’m talking to you now, as if I actually feel your pain.  SoI’mnotgonnahelpthesemeanoldgreedybanksterbuddiesofminenomoreIpromise.

(How was that?  You’re damned right, I am good.)  So, anyway, voters, citizens, y’all, whatever, don’t freak, I’m gonna hook you up.  Me and the Congress and our financial backers are gonna continue to work together to keep right on screwing you, but from now on, I promise to bring the grease.  Hell, we’ll even get you drunk first, how’s that?  After all, if you get drunk enough, and we screw you right, you might even buy us a car.  So, now, I’m gonna make a show of asking Congress to represent.  Hey, homies, y’all in?  (Just nod and play along, will ya?  Sheesh, I’m on TV, here.)

Okey dokey, then, that’s just about it.  I’m just gonna repeat the same thing I just said two or three more times using different words until everybody at home nods off, that’s how we know they’re really under.  We don’t have to worry about that with the people here, they’re already hypnotized, at least the ones who aren’t brainwashed or paid off, and besides, they’re all sitting on cattle prods.  If they weren’t, they’d be dropping off like flies since most of ‘em are really, really old, plus it looks cool when they jump up every time David pulls the master switch.   Even though Nancy always jumps up and tells them to do that for me whenever I make the drinks flow for her at dinner, while one of my boyz plants a buzzer in her Ben-wa balls, know what I mean, David knows, that if the fluffers we pay see the seat fillers in da Haouuuuse keep jumping up and down on cue, and clapping whenever I take a breath, they’ll be able to Astroturf with something that will pass for credibility.  Hell, we all know that y’all at home ain’t really listening, anyway, you’re  just watching ‘cuz you think I’m cute.  So do I.

So, yadda, yadda, yadda, dadda, dee da da, blahblahblah, hmmmhmmhmmhmmhmmmmm, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  Dooo doo doo, lala laaaaa, boom shacka lacka lacka, chicka aw aw, awwwnnnn, nanna na na, nanna na na, hey, hey, hey, rah, rah, sis boombah,… Alllll righty, then, I guess it’s time for the “hopey, changey, future is now, now is the time, we can make it if we try, yeah, yeah, yeah” part .  So, hopey, changey, future is now, now is the time, we can make it if we try, yeah, yeah, yeah.  Thank you, and good night!  Be seated!  Please, no, be seated!  Really, you’re too much!  No kidding, you really are!  Awww, thanks!  I do mean it! No, you’re the best!  Good night!  Thanks for comin’!  Gotta go!  Luv ya!  I mean it!  I do!  You really are the best!  Yes, you are!  You’re too kind!  Thank you!  Kisses!  Toodles!

Obie has left the building.

More Speech Than I Could Stand

Okay, I just tried to watch as much of The Greatest Speech Since The Last Greatest Speech Ever Delivered By A Teflon TelePrompTer Reader Propped Up By Bought-And-Paid-For Media Fluffers, as any mere human being could reasonably be expected to submit to voluntarily, but long before I fully tired of watching well-dressed, drunk-looking senior citizens acting like Jack-in-the-boxes doing the macarena, my sister started screaming, “Turn it off!, Turn it off! For the sake of all that is good and holy, would you pleeeeeease turn it off, and make the madness stop!?!” so I missed a lot of it.

I’ll go read it for myself, instead of watching him read it while Congress does calisthenics and claps on cue.  Check back later for more in-depth analysis.

Meanwhile, enjoy the video.

His First Term?

Just Barely President, Baracus Hubris Maximus (hail Ceasar!) has been prattling on about “his first term” since he threw his size 10-gallon hat into the ring, like he knows something the rest of us don’t.  Like the rest of his West Wing “reality,” this is yet another transparent bit of scripted brainwashing propaganda in the Theater of the Obsurd.  However, though he no doubt truly, truly believes this one, the possibility that he might have some sort of insider knowledge on this point is more than a little freaking scary creepy.

Yesterday, while vowing to halve the deficit he inherited, yet saying zippo, nada, nuttin’ about the deficit he’s creating, he promised with his fingers crossed to get the job done by the end of “his first term,” something which he has already hinted would ensure him a second.  But, as with all things Obama, one must ask oneself, is there more to this than that?  This is an especially valuable point to consider, given that before the end of “his first term,” we’re all going to be spending a lot of time mumbling to ourselves anyway.  Might as well have something worthwhile to discuss.

Like his handlers’ now familiar other rather adept feats of legerdemain, such as the tried and true, clever use of favorable polling results ahead of entry into particularly tricky territory, in  proven-to-be largely successful attempts to pave the way for the increased possibility of public acceptance of whatever balderdash is read from left to right off his his Traveling TelePrompTer To Go, “my first term” has the hypnotic effect of “you are getting sleepy.”

Of course, in advance of his sure-to-be-historic first non State of the Union address tomorrow, we have already been treated to the requisite number of “he’s the shit” polls in the last few days, one even going so far as to assure us that he is more heroic, and thus, logically, more powerful, than Jesus.  Since, for Christians, Jesus trumps Moses, we can take comfort in the blind faith that the Obamessiah will lead us to the Promised Land of Financial Security by throwing out the Money Changers.  See how that works?  And, while all this is going on, we are being properly greased and trussed to receive the news that Our Dear Leader will reluctantly have to bite the bullet and nationalize the already nationalized entire financial sector.  Before “his first term” really even starts.

It is indeed comforting to know that we have a Father Figure who will do what’s best for us, even if that means increasing our (the taxpayer’s) risk while fattening the pockets of the beleaguered banksters.  Which is exactly what he’s about to tell us he’s about to do.  But you see, that’s how he’s going to “remake” the country, and bring about the “change” he’s been promising to achieve before the end of “his first term.”  First, see, he’s gotta get control of the banks, then, all industry, then, put us all to work on chain gangs building roads and railroads, then force us to “volunteer,” then turn over the school system to the military.  After that, by the time the government is in charge of everything else, fixing health care is a piece of cake.  Quite ambitious for the four years he’s got until the end of “his first term,” huh?

Now, if this is your idea of liberal/progressive heaven, the Wall Street Journal’s Matt Miller says, in what I assume is not snark, “Shhhhhh! Shut the hell up and let the man do his thing before you blow it!”  Of course, being an Obot fluent in ObaSpeak, he didn’t use those exact words, per se:

President Barack Obama is taking a beating from liberal critics who think his attempt to court Republican support is a political failure and a policy disaster. Yet this assault on Mr. Obama’s bipartisan instinct is misguided and, ironically, threatens to undermine liberal goals.

snip

Mr. Obama’s stimulus plan, which aims first to mitigate the collapse in aggregate demand in the economy, nonetheless lays down important markers toward this agenda, even if (or perhaps because) the details didn’t please partisans on either side. By marrying major new public investments with major new tax cuts, Mr. Obama is signaling that public activism and private incentives both matter profoundly. This yin-and-yang approach was strikingly on display at the bipartisan “fiscal responsibility summit,” which Mr. Obama convened at the White House yesterday. Before members of Congress and other guests, the president insisted on the need to restore long-term fiscal discipline (including entitlement reform) even as the nation runs up historic deficits to battle the recession in the next few years. The president’s professed reluctance to “nationalize” ailing banks — which has left space for an extraordinarily swift outside consensus to emerge (led by surprising voices like Alan Greenspan’s and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s) that temporary bank takeovers may be necessary — shows similar instincts. (emphasis mine)

See, Obie’s just playin’.  He’s finagling the Republicans with fake out overtures of bipartisanship so they can publicly reject him, then, pretending he doesn’t want stuff he really does want, because he knows whatever he says he doesn’t like, they’re gonna promote.  Clever, huh?  That way, he gets his way and if it tanks, it’s not his fault.  If it doesn’t, he’s a hero. (hail Ceasar!)  Either way, he gets his second term.

But, first, he’s gotta get the banks.

Now, you may say, “oh, come on! Are you really trying to tell me you think this guy is that friggin’ Machiavellian?”  To which I would respond, “you must be an Obot.”  Everybody else is well aware that similarly scuzzy, deceitful, underhanded manipulations are the reason he’s president now.   Step away from the KoolAid, and prepare to serve.  First though, I should warn you, you, too are going to have to assume the position sooner or later.  Once you have a firm grasp on your ankles, maybe you’ll begin to really see The Light.

What “Is” Is

When Baracus Ceaser Obamacus incessantly cried, “Change!” from the rooftops via TelePrompTer in stump speech after stump speech written by the Cardboard Titty Groper at the behest of the Astroturfing PuppetMaster acting on behalf of the banksters bankrolling the hopium-fueled ObamaLove Train steamrolling into the White House, who knew he really meant restructuring the global financial landscape, huh?

The inventors of the soon-to-be patented (I’m sure) ObaSpeak have mastered the art of diversion through obfuscation that lesser politicians and wordsmiths have been practicing inartfully for millennia.  Thus, bailouts are not bailouts, and “nationalization” is not quite, exactly “nationalization,” per se.

I guess when you’re determined to “redistribute the wealth” on the downlow, you have to figure out a way to freak people out without freaking them totally out.  And, if you can come up with a way to trick them into thinking it’s their idea, so much the better.  That’s probably why the number of women in high places in the administration will always continue to be limited by design, we invented the “oh,honey, how clever,” ploy and can see right though it.  That’s why when it comes to the current global financial system restructuring going on right under the world’s nose, I sweetly call “bullshit, dear.”

I’m no economist, but I know screwing when I see it, even when I don’t know the people, or can’t identify the species of the animals involved.  And, oh, baby, oh, there’s some serious money screwing going on.

Before the banksters got together and financed the junior senator from Illinois’ meteoric rise to the top of the political trash heap, the world’s financial landscape looked very different.  Yet, in just a couple short years, the financial structure as we’ve known it has “collapsed,” almost in a curious tandem reverse/parallel tango with the seemingly unqualified and inexperienced young political phenom’s ascent.  Funny, that.

Now that there are no more large investment banks, as far as I know, news reports last year trumpeted the conversion to commercial banks of Goldman Sachs’ and JP Morgan Chase’s status as that of the last two, and the government has played favorites with which struggling banks and financial institutions to prop up, we now enter the “not really nationalizing, except we own ‘em” phase of the Bwah Ha Ha Plan.

How do we know that this is a Democratic UniParty plot, and not just a cleanup of the Bush administration mess?  Why, Harry Reid told us.  Not exactly in those words, per se; that’s not the way of ObamaCanCratSpeak.  From Politico:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he supports efforts of the federal government to dramatically expand its stake in Citigroup, but wants people to back off from the dramatic rhetoric.

“It’s not nationalization, it’s protecting the taxpayers’ interests,” Reid (D-Nev.) told MSNBC’s Morning Joe program on Monday.

“In the bailout, the TARP, that we made sure the American taxpayer had a way of getting paid back for their investments,” Reid said. “That’s what this is all about and it’s the right way to go.”

In other, normal American words, “yeah, we already own a lot of Wall Street, but, you’re getting a cut, eventually, so ixnay on the ationalization-nay, will ya?”  He forgot to mention that the 8 – 13 dollar cut you’re currently slated to get, just might be in Ameros in the near future.   Dollars will very soon be worthless, anyway, so kwitcherbitchin’.  Remember, TARP is bipartisan.

The Politico piece goes on to claim that Republicans are upset about, shhhh, nationalization, shhhh, but, didn’t that cross-party blog pioneer/ObaFluffer, Huff ‘n’ Puff, among every other news outlet on the planet, report last week that Lindsay Graham made the Sunday news show rounds planting the “we politicians can do it better” seeds in the Astroturf bs?  And, isn’t he just the cutest little Barney Frank alter ego across the aisle, hmmmmm?

Now even the Soros backed Center for American Politics‘ hatchet blog, Think Progress, is trumpeting the “if not nationalization, what?” drumbeat.  Even Republicans are beginning to see the futility of resistance. That the growing chorus of cacophony is reaching eardrum-splitting noise levels is probably just the inevitable response to the legitimate crisis of confidence currently devaluing the global economy, right?  I mean, we gotta do something, don’t we?

Sure.

So while the Spokesmodel-in-Chief dons his most comfortable Professor Man costume and publicly breaks up his lackeys into study groups, the better to memorize their approved talking points asssigned them by the Astroturfing, bankster-employed, stage manager/prducer who had them written and distributed, those who chose to remain clueless can take comfort in the fact that worldwide screwing of this magnetude has never before been attempted, so is likely not happening now.  It’s okay.  The thrill of telling you, “I toldja so,” will be just as sweet as it will be for other, less tinfoil- friendly PUMAs when the shit fully hits the fan and splatters us all.

Inside the Wall Street Whisper Campaign

As I watched last week’s PBS special about the financial crisis, “Inside the Meltdown,” one of the many things I was struck by was the lengths to which the producers went to establish the consensus of opinion regarding Wall Street’s inordinate sensitivity and susceptibility to rumor, gossip, and innuendo.  That such a vast, powerful, integral industry run by people presumed to be America’s “best and brightest” could allow decisions affecting the rise and fall of entire global conglomerates comprising the world’s economic foundation to be based on nothing more than “he said, she said” tales told out of school, or worse, possibly deliberately planted, malicious seeds of doubt, seems hard to fathom.  Yet, the possibility of such an eventuality was demonstrated in great detail in the documentary, and, with just a modicum of imagination, one might easily consider that a few well timed “revelations,” true or not, might well take down an entire financial empire, if not industry.  A little research might lead one to believe that such a thing is not only possible, it just might have happened.

In March of 2008, at the time Bear Stearns tanked and was  sold to JP Morgan Chase at 2 dollars a share, only to have the price bumped up to ten dollars a share after the government intervened, even that price was only considered to be approximately ten percent of its market value.  According to many sources, such intervention was rather suspect, for a lot of reasons, especially considering that the firm was not insolvent, though nobody would loan them money because of rumors that they were.  In other words, it was not a lack capital that undid the company, but a lack of confidence.  Vanity Fair encapsulated the cause of Bear Stearns’ death this way in the opening paragraph of its August ‘08 “autopsy:”

On Monday, March 10, the rumor started: Bear Stearns was having liquidity problems. In fact, the maverick investment bank had around $18 billion in cash reserves. But soon the speculation created its own reality, and the race was on to keep Bear’s crisis from ravaging Wall Street. With the blow-by-blow from insiders, Bryan Burrough follows the players-Bear’s stunned executives, trigger-happy reporters at CNBC, a nervous Fed, a shadowy group of short-sellers-in what some believe was the greatest financial scandal in history.

So, why did the corporation’s protestations to the contrary fall on industry-wide deaf ears?  The company had experienced difficulties the previous year with 2 of its subprime mortgage hedge funds,  High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund, and High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund, and was facing lawsuits from Barclays and other angry investors, as a result.  Additionally, two of its former managers, Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi, were eventually arrested in June of ‘08 for taking their own money out of the funds while propping them up with corporate bailout money and lying to investors about it.  But, that was after the company died and was consumed.

According to CNN Money, Fortune, CFO Sam Molinaro asserted that by February, ‘08, Stearns’ troubles were behind them:

Bear had survived one liquidity challenge, in the summer of 2007, when two of its hedge funds cratered after the subprime mortgage collapse. The firm had labored to repair its balance sheet and improve its financing. “Our capital position is strong,” said Bear’s CFO, Sam Molinaro, at an investors’ conference in February. “Balance-sheet liquidity has continued to improve throughout the course of the year. We spent an awful lot of time trying to reduce our higher-risk asset categories.”

So, could Bear Stearns have weathered the storm?  Then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s old company didn’t think so.  On March 11, an email sent by Goldman Sach’s derivatives group to its hedge fund clients, saying they would no longer back them on Bear Stearns deals, was the nail in the company’s coffin.

While I am not prepared to suggest that there was a direct “cause and effect” relative to the currently discussed events, I do think it’s helpful to bear in mind that the financial “crisis” evolved against the backdrop of the presidential campaign.  Would Bear have “collapsed” had the results of Super Tuesday been different?  Who knows?  It is something to think about, though.

On March 28, the Chicago Tribune and Reuters, among others reported that rumors that the company was claiming were “totally unfounded,” were swirling about Lehman Brothers, too.  By August 25, on the day the Democratic National convention started, The Deal.com was reporting that the rumors had become a full-fledged storm amid suggestions of a hostile takeover by Korea Development Bank and intra-company planned coup against CEO Richard Fuld.

On September 15, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy after the government, presumably weary of going to bat for “failing” Wall Street companies, like Bear, having bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the week before, refused to intervene this time.  Interestingly, one of Lehman’s holdings, Neuberger Berman, headed by then President, George W. Bush’s second cousin, George Herbert Walker IV, was exempted from the bankruptcy filing:

Neuberger Berman LLC and Lehman Brothers Asset Management will continue to conduct business as usual and will not be subject to the bankruptcy case of the parent company, and its portfolio management, research and operating functions remain intact. In addition, fully paid securities of customers of Neuberger Berman are segregated from the assets of Lehman Brothers and aren’t subject to the claims of Lehman Brothers Holdings’ creditors, Lehman said.

According to Wikipedia, and corroborated here, on September 13, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG, tc,) then President of the New York Federal Reserve, now Secretary of the Treasury, convened a meeting about Lehman’s future that Lehman wasn’t invited to, after Lehman suffered substantial losses starting September 9:

An official from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said participants include Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox. The New York Fed official asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the talks.

Participants in today’s discussions at the offices of the New York Fed also include executives from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch. Representatives for Lehman Brothers were not present during the discussions.

Lehman claimed to be in negotiations for sale with Barclays and Bank of America, both of whom backed out.  Bank of America bought Merill Lynch on September 14, instead.  Barclays bought Lehman’s North American investment-banking and trading divisions along with its New York headquarters building, the next day, after Lehman was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

After the fact, in October, former CEO Richard Fuld said in prepared testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, that rumor-mongering was a big part of the problem that brought Lehman down. However, Fuld’s first contention was that the Federal Reserve’s refusal to allow Lehman an exemption to become a bank holding company, or commercial bank, was a body blow to the company.   On September 22, a week after Lehman filed bankruptcy, The Fed allowed Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, “the last two major investment banks” to switch.  According to the New York Times, this was a major big deal. The Washington Post reported at the time that the Fed had approved the conversion with “unusual haste.”

On September 27, the New York Times* reported that one of the members at the meeting that decided Lehman’s fate was Lloyd C. Blankfeld of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson’s old firm.  At that meeting, the state of A.I.G., Goldman Sach’s largest trading partner, was discussed.  As we know now, the government bailed out A.I.G., yet let Lehman die.  Naked Capitalism asserts that the Goldman Sachs/Paulson relationship might have been more than a factor.  In October, Bloomberg claimed that Lehman’s collapse was the fault of JP Morgan Chase, purchasers of Bear Stearns.

It bears remembering that in the midst of this Lehman Brothers/A.I.G./Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac financial upheaval, Barack Obama and John McCain were involved in a pitched battle for the presidency.  It is also worth noting that Obama was reported at the time to have been in daily contact with Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary and former head of Goldman Sachs, one of Obama’s largest campaign donors.  FYI, Paulson was raised in Barrington, Illinois, outside of Chicago, was also head of Goldman’s Midwestern Division, headquartered there.  Worthy of equal or better note, Obama’s campaign economic team included William Daley, Mayor Richard Daley’s brother, and Midwest Chairman of JP Morgan Chase, as well as its CEO and New York Fed Board of Directors member, Jamie Dimon, who parlayed his turnaround of Bank One, after being dumped by his mentor, Sandy Weill of Citigroup, into the JP Morgan gig.  Oh, gosh, did I forget to mention Bank One is in Chicago?  My bad.  One other noteworthy Obama advisor at that time was Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG, tc).  I have done a series of posts chronicling Jamie Dimon’s involvement in the Obamenon, I humbly advise readers to check them out, here, here, here, and here,to name just a few posts, not so much for my opinions, but for the links to information they provide.

By November, when Obama secured the presidency, Paulson’s TARP had distributed about half of the allotted funds to “troubled” banks, more than half of it to the country’s largest, including Goldman and JP Morgan.  According to reports, most of which came to light after Obama was inaugurated, the banksters were forced to accept the funds the Treasury was giving away, whether they wanted to or not, yet were later called on the carpet to explain how they spent them.  At the hearing in the House, they, like their counterparts in the beleaguered auto industry, were castigated for frivolous financial excess, even though, not all of them requested government funds.  As president, Obama had by that point, already railed against the ” shameful” bankers, and issued a “salary cap,” generally considered to be window dressing, since it only applied to those financial institutions receiving future government assistance from the second half of TARP, not the ones funded in the first bailout.  TTTG, tc was said to have prevailed against other Obama administration advisers, namely David Axelrod, in the president’s ultimate soft bailout stance.

The TARP program, or Paulson Plan, is not universally loved by bankers, some say it’s a sneaky attempt at nationalization, or in the words of Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel, “subsidization.”   The Brookings Institute called for more Congressional oversight in December, calling the plan “frayed” and “rushed into law.”  At any rate, the relatively ineffective, previous admonition is now a moot point, having been trumped by the new, stricter “salary cap” guidelines supposedly snuck into the president’s “stimulus plan” by Chris Dodd when nobody was looking.

The new rules require all banks recieving government assistence to be subject to the new, stricter salary cap rules.  That means, even banks forced into the bailout program are now under government supervision.  And, though Obama has made, “the discussion’s not over” noises, as Politico pointed out, it’s not credible that the administration was blindsided:

The tougher rules that passed in Congress were no last-minute surprise. Dodd talked them up in a February 5 press release, and in another released on Thursday, just hours before the bill was filed. The rules were debated in the Senate.

Okay, I know this is a long post, and to be honest, I’ve only scratched the surface of the mountains of information and questions that arise from it, here.  But, for a series of rumors to be the catalyst for events that end up in the “nationalization” and/or “subsidization” of the nation’s banks, at the expense of the global economy, is a mindboggling thing to consider, even if it’s ultimately untrue, or unprovable, if it is.

As I’ve said before, it’s reminiscent of a John Grisham novel, The Appeal, to be exact, so maybe my skepticism is born of an overactive imagination.  But all things considered, the more pertinent question is, what if it’s not?

*The New York Times printed a correction clarifying the dates and participants of 2 separate meetings re: Lehman/A.I.G.:

Because of an editing error, an article on Sunday about the financial problems of American International Group referred incorrectly to the timing and participants at meetings at the New York Federal Reserve between Saturday, Sept. 13, and Monday, Sept. 15. Although there were indeed meetings that weekend, there was also a separate meeting on Monday to discuss financial aid for A.I.G. Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, was the only Wall Street chief executive who attended the Monday meeting, not the only chief executive who attended weekend meetings. Also, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, did not lead or attend the Monday meeting. (Both Mr. Blankfein and Mr. Paulson did attend the weekend meetings.)

Leave Roland Alone!

You know, even though I was born and raised a Democrat, and remained one all my life until the lying rat bastards showed themselves to be the slimy bunch of lying rat bastards they are during this election cycle, every day I find myself agreeing with Republicans more and more.  Not because I think they’re right about anything much, but, because I’m beginning to hate Democrats, too.  What a sniveling bunch of whiny assed, wannabe crooks and schnooks y’all elected to guide this sinking ship to the bottom of the hellish Ocean of No Returns they keep dumping our good money after bad into via the coffers of the greedy corporate bankster masters they serve.  And no, I’m not talking about Rod Blagojevich and his hapless Senate appointee, Roland Burris, I’m talking about the sanctimonious, holier-than-thou charlatans fingerpointing scapegoats like school children jockeying for position at the head of the line for the teeter-totter, stepping on each other’s toes and poking each other in the ribs as they holler for Teacher, only to adopt angelic visages and mumble, “he did it,” in disingenuous attempts to escape attention when faced with the wrath of authority.

Buncha schmoos.

Obacrats of every stripe are vainly trying to lay their entire culture and history of corruption at the feet of two dimwits stupid enough to make it easy for them to do so, while pulling every sneaky, underhanded, trick in the book so they can stack the deck in their favor.  Fuck an election, who cares who the people want in Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat, who even cares if the one they got stuck with is a perfectly acceptable warm body, party line voting seat filler, like the one holding place for Jo(k)e Biden’s son?  No, the Barack Attack is hell bent on race-baiting, bribe arranging, blame-shifting Candidate Number 5, Jesse Jackson Jr., now that his first choice, Valerie (Throw ‘Em in the Street) Jarrett, had to be sacrificed up to White House staff and National Economic Council member on the downlow.

No, Obie’s Boyz got a game plan, and anybody that doesn’t sign on is headed under the bus.  Or worse.  Even the Obasucking press is starting to see that.  Commenting on White House shill Robert Gibbs’ ominous sounding, thinly  veiled warning to Roland Burris, that the president wanted the clueless pawn to take some time off and think about his future, The Swamp’s Frank James wrote in the Chicago Tribune that maybe Burris might want to think about sleeping with one eye open:

That sounded like one of those “messages” you never want to get from the Chicago Mob.

Clearly, the White House would like to see the Burris story go away, embarrassing distraction that it is.

So was this the White House’s way of saying to Burris, “Nice mausoleum you got there; sure would hate to see anything happen to it?”

Or did it portend that he might be receiving a dead fish, like what reportedly happened to a pollster who once got on the wrong side of Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff?

It all reminded us of that famous scene from the Godfather where the Hollywood mogul wakes up in bed next to a horse’s head. Not good.

So now, Burris is the movie producer who wouldn’t hire Frank Sinatra Johnny Fontaine for “From Here to Eternity” some movie-within-a-movie without an offer he couldn’t refuse, while Blagojevich is the Frankie Five Angels character encouraged to soak himself to death in a warm tub for turning against “da Family,” according to John Kaas.   Sheesh, who would put out such cheesy movie ripoff “hits” (the ripoffs are cheesy, not the fuckin’ awesome Godfather movie series) besides the skinny-but-tough, Godfather lovin’, gun to a knife fight bringin’,  Dudfather-in-Chief?

Who else would send out his Astroturfing, poor man’s Tom Hagen to enlist the footsoldiers in the media to go after New York Governor David Paterson for disobeying direct orders, but the same mob that took down his snooping in “da Family business” predecessor?  These same sorry saps playing cops ‘n’ robbers on the taxpayers’ dime are the only ones with enough clout to sic their prosecuters on the payroll the Feds who’re paid to protect the bigger fish with the power of employment on little fish like Burris and Blago .

Everybody knows that just like in the case of Rod Blagojevich, the reason that the Obacrats are putting so much media pressure on Burris to resign is that they have no legal leg to stand on.  They’re just pissed and petulant, because they got played, since they fancy themselves as playas, which is why they sat on Burris’ “affidavit” until after he delivered the stimulus bill for them, then leaked it to the Sun-Times like the leaders of a nation of cowards they are.

So, while the schoolyard bullies hide their dirty hands in their pockets as they nod their heads in unison in the direction of their agreed upon scapegoats, as if they’re the only ones guilty and that’s the only crime being committed on the playground, and bogusly promise to be good this time, at least one pragmatic veteran aware of the shifting allegiances often associated with political turf wars, is pretending to be Switzerland.  Chicago’s mayor, Richard M. Daley, whose JP Morgan Chase board member brother, William, rides with the ObaFather’s posse, is refusing to pile on:

“Let’s put everything in perspective and give him an opportunity to explain himself,” Daley said today when asked if Burris should step down. “Automatically, every time something happens people want everybody to resign. Is it becoming very common now to tell people to resign after he was appointed?”

Daley gave Burris credit for voting for the federal economic stimulus package which the mayor said “never would have passed” without Burris’ vote.

Perhaps sensing the difference between the way the wind and politics blows, Daley displayed a perspective rare in Illinois politics re: the BlagoBurris folderol:

“Three people got killed [last night]. Do you think the people who killed them care who is their U.S. senator?” Daley said. “Life goes on.”

It does, indeed, Dickie.  So, in this case, like the rightwingers, I’m rooting for Burris.

From The Ground Up

Looks like Obama the Candidate was really serious about “change.”  As we all know, “change” was the buzzword of the 2008 campaign season, promoted constantly, incessantly, annoyingly by Barack Obama, and picked up on by all of his opponents in self defense.  But, while everybody else was just spouting campaign rhetoric; after all, whenever one administration replaces another, you’re going to get “change,” Obama seems to have been serious as a heart attack without health insurance about it.

Conventional wisdom and common sense would indicate to even the densest among us that in order to achieve the “true change” Obama promised to bring to the “old ways of Washington” in his determination to “remake the country,” the country in question, as in any renovation, would need to be torn down to the studs.  And, it appears Obama is well on his way to completing Phase One.  At least, according to George Soros.  Reuters reports that Soros, speaking at a Columbia University dinner, echoed the sentiments of the speaker before him, Paul Volcker, head of the president’s new Economic Advisory Board, when he said the world as we know it is well on its way to irrevocable destruction, economically speaking:

Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.

Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.

He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.

“We witnessed the collapse of the financial system,” Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. “It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”

Hmmm…isn’t that what Rep. Paul Kanjorski said, and all the Obots went, “Pfssshh, yeah, right“?  And, if I’m following all this correctly, doesn’t this mean that the economic event that lead to Paulson’s TARP (don’t call it a) bailout and propelled a curiously over-funded Obama from a hotly contested, tied competition into the White House virtually unopposed, is also the catalyst of global financial ruin?  What say the Obots, now?

Well, they can’t say Obama leads by example.  Or, maybe he does, since people not paying bills, for one reason or another, is a big part of the mess we’re in.  Obama doesn’t seem to want to pay his bills, either, at least not the one to his adopted home city for the Bashapalooza they threw for him on Election Night.  The Chicago Sun Times has the details:

Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama’s victory celebration in Grant Park — despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions.

“The Democratic National Committee has not yet paid us,” Peter Scales, a spokesman for the city’s Office of Budget and Management, said Thursday after questions from the Chicago Sun-Times. “We’re reaching out to them this week.”

I guess South Side Slick expects the city to just hang on for the stimulus money since there’s probably pork aplenty to cover.  And, now that the Illinois legislature has done its part in kicking Rod Blagojevich to the curb, the state qualifies for its share.  There’s probably a bonus for breaking harmless little Roland Burris‘ heart by stomping on his dreams and jackbooting him out of the Senate job he dearly wanted, foolishly embraced and would be out of in a minute anyway.  One way or another, Chicago will be paid; either they’re headed under the bus, or somebody will “deliver an envelope,” if you get my drift.  Obama takes care of his own, it’s the Chicago Way.

Of course, the Obama Way means nobody has to pay their bills; he’s hellbent on seeing to it that everybody at least has a house, regardless of whether they can afford it, or not.  He unveiled his big, stock market tanking housing plan to help out the lender-seduced buyers who jumped off the deep end into houses that now have them underwater, and financially back up those lenders for going along with the program with government money, if they feel like it, unless they’re Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Since that’s the only way the greedy lenders can get the up front bailout money and back end insurance, I have a feeling they’ll probably play along.

For those pretty much destitute-from-the-jump folks just given over-priced houses by lenders, basically for free, just to get the right numbers on the paper those bankers were going to turn right around and sell for even more worthless computer bits and bytes signifying nothing, even though everybody knew they’d never be able to pay it back, Obie has sicced ACORN on the problem on the QT.  All those folks have to do is make like Wild West expansioneers and just squat on their homestead, since Obie’s got their back with the bailed out bankers, no matter what.  Besides, the original mortgage has probably been through so many grubby banksters’ hands, the guys trying to foreclose probably couldn’t produce the necessary paperwork if they wanted to.  If the system gamers get cold feet, or the banker on the low end not hip to the deal tries to lock them out, a quick call to Obie’s ACORN enforcers will bring the strongarm crew to help you gain access to your now completely free house.  Of course, like all Dons, Obie’s three steps removed, especially since he got Rep. Marcy Kaptur to sell the plan to the clueless for him.

Don’t be fooled by the “hold bank executives feet to the fire” rah-rah coming from the administration, either.   The whole “salary cap” thing is bogus all around, being nothing but re-election theater as it is.  Team Obama and his money man, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) tried to quietly tiptoe out of the whole TARP-related “take my money, play buy my rules” dramatic ploy, but Congress realized they need votes too, so they snuck it back into the stimulus bill.  And, even though it sounds like “Ooooooh, we showed those bad bankers,” anybody who believes there isn’t enough wiggle room in the provisions to drive a fleet of private jets, and Daschle limos through, is a hopium head, and deserves the no grease screwing a-comin’.

Same for anybody who really believes Obie’s gonna close Gitmo; I’ll believe it when I see it, since the Obama patented “clear myself ahead of time” review panel he commisioned, this time through the Pentagon instead of White House counsel like the brush-Blago-off-the-shoulders one, says everything at Gitmo is Geneva convention compliant and thus, hunky dory.  So, why close it?  Look for him to rescind his exec order sometime in the coming year, on the sly, like he’s extending those Bush policies.  Shhhhhh.

So, while Obacrats raise Democratic in-fighting to a new art form, using definitions of “what is is” as a time tested, media approved bludgeoning tool against their brethren-on-the-outs in the case of David (Caroline wasn’t my first choice) Paterson and Roland (but I didn’t give him any money) Burris, the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader can continue happily fronting for the banksters, robbing the world blind, fighting wars, and tearing the country to the ground, so he can remake it in his own image with a clean slate.  Like he, and his wife, told you he would.

All the while, remaining more popular than Jesus in the process.  Like Dee Dee Myers told us he was.

And, the wheels on…oh, hell, you know the rest.

Playing President

Barack Obama is a mild-mannered college professor playing at being a politician pretending to know what the hell he’s talking about when he reads other people’s ideas written up by the Cardboard Titty Groper from a TelePrompTer, or, Heaven forbid, note cards.  As such, he has yet to settle on a comfortable persona, or alter-ego, if you will.   Is he an affable, perpetual campaigner, selling “hopey change” to the hard of listening?  Is he a Dark Darth Vader of Doom with a “sky is falling” Chicken Little complex?  Could he be SuperO!, sent to us from a planet far, far, far away, in another galaxy, by a benevolent father determined to save our people as his meet their end?  Or, is he a stern, yet compassionate EveryDad, kindly dispensing “tough love” to his cherished, yet clueless adolescent children?  Whatever role he’s playing, he seems to have forgotten that in our system of government, he’s technically, no better than any other citizen.

“My fellow Americans.”

Most presidents use this phrase to address their fellow citizens, but, to the best of my knowledge, Barack Obama usually does not.  One suspects that the reason for this is that even he knows enough to realize that “My loyal subjects,” what he wants to call us, is inappropriate.  Therefore, he tends to call us the political equivalent of “you guys,” which is, “everybody,” as in, “Good evening, everybody,” or “Everybody be seated.”

Whatever.  The Obamessiah has donned just about all of his myriad personalities over the past few weeks since the inauguration; first as the Play President, getting his picture taken sitting behind his big, shiny new desk in his shirtsleeves, pretending to talk on the phone so it would look like he was actually doing Important Stuff.  When that proved to be insufficient to inspire the proper degree of deference and awe necessary to force Congress to do his bidding, he and his PuppetMasters decided it was time to dust off the Lovable Candidate suit, pack up the Traveling TelePrompTer and and hit the road giving away houses door to door like Oprah doing Ed McMahon.  When it looked like even that might not work, he commandeered the airwaves as Doctor Destructo, scaring the shit out of “his fellow Americans,” and other little children with his “catastrophic” proclamations portending imminent doom and devastation if he didn’t get his way with his stimulus plan, only to be met with the fate he said he was trying to avoid when he did.

Earlier today, Obantos channeled his inner Huxtable and scolded his headstrong older mayoral sons and daughters working in the family business, charged with dispensing their allowance to their younger siblings fairly.  Like Cliff to lovable screw-up Theo, Papa Prez laid down the law; “do it right, or answer to me.”  Like Theo, the kiddie mayors grabbed the cash, said, “uh-huh, luv ya, Pops,” and hit the door quick before he changed his mind and snatched it back in order to issue more conditions they fully plan to ignore.  Again, like Cliff, the Acting President smiled indulgently, knowing they’d be back for more as soon as they ran through what he’d given them, just as well as they knew he had held some back for just that purpose.

He has also, on occasion, been thrust into the role of hapless, bumbling Mr. Peepers does Dagwood, such as when his best laid cabinet plans gang aft aglaed.  Having three candidates for one position withdraw from consideration, as he has had with Secretary of Commerce (Pritzker, Richardson, and Gregg) could make anybody look stupid, even if his Secretary of Treasury wasn’t a tax cheat the world had no confidence in.   And, if he was the only one.

As he theorizes and strategizes hypothetical responses to focus group directives, marking time giving pep talks in front of crowds and television cameras, tap dancing as fast as he can in an attempt to divert attention from his un-preparedness and ineptitude, his Traveling Light and Magic Show still enjoys good ratings.  However, in spite of his uncanny quick-change talent and clever scriptwriters eerily in touch with their target audience through age, internet and Starbucks, he would do well to remember that there is not enough Mocha Choca Latte bars and customers to keep a bad show on the air once the novelty wears off for the fickle “fellow Americans” he serves.

Especially if they think it’s his fault they’re broke.

So, keep dancing, Mr. President, so far, your fancy footwork has been enough to dazzle the gullible with your particular brand of Obandini.  Tomorrow, a better show might come along.

Or, your fans’ real parents might make ‘em get a job.

Forget The Doom and Gloom, I Want My Freakin’ Pony

Traveling around the internet from one bad news story to another, I have to admit, I’m really sick of waking up to all the doom and gloom.  I feel like “The Wiz’s Evilene, played by Big “What’s Happenin‘” Mama, Mabel King, in Geoffrey Holder’s (Un-cola nuts) ripoff remake of the classic film, The Wizard of Oz, based on L. Frank Baum’s children’s book that made Stephanie Mills a Broadway star before Diana Ross forced her too old ass into her role in the movie ripoff version of Holder’s play, who sang “Don’t Bring Me No Bad News,” a song with no corollary in the original movie version, and was probably only in there because Mabel King was too big to ride a bike accompanied by the “dun duh dun duh dunnnn” Wicked Witch of the West music.

It’s not fun to wake up to constant news coverage of a president you didn’t vote for reading things that piss you off from a TelePrompTer day in and day out, especially when all he does is blame you for things that couldn’t possibly be your fault because they’d be easy to fix if they were.  When all you can look forward to is the President of the United States telling you over and over again that all you can look forward to is catastrophe, unemployment, and worthless money, so often that even the last President from his party, who’s been pretending he likes him and doesn’t mind being called a racist bigot who can’t dance just so the new president could beat his wife and get the job of Doomsayer, is going on TV himself to tell the guy, “ixnay on the oomglay,” it tends to fuck up your party plans from the get-go.

And, if that’s not enough, when the history making, First Black President in the History of the Universe Ever to Be Elected Just Because He’s Black and It’s Time’s First Black Attorney General goes in front of an audience made up of people largely responsible for putting disproportionate numbers of black people in overcrowded jails who are celebrating “Don’t Get Too Happy Black People Month,” and tells them they represent a nation of cowards just because most Americans are reluctant to get together on weekends with people they can barely tolerate during the workweek, and call each other racists, it’s enough to really make you start hating people.

Meanwhile, the minions of the Official Oracle of Ominousity go about the business of redistributing taxpayer wealth to banking industry execs curiously proficient at crying broke while flying around in taxpayer funded private jets that rival the taxpayer funded private jets the taxpayer funded military flies the bankers’ duly purchased elected Chief Executive Officer around to needless photo-ops, mini-vacations and campaign stops months after he’s been elected in so that he can remind us that his bankers won’t give us any money because it’s our fault he has to do what he’s always promised he was going to have to do to fix the broken country we fucked up and he has to remake in his image from the ground up.

So, while the vast majority try to figure out how to make a dollar out of fifteen cents, in the words of Digital Underground before their ex-roadie, Tupac stole the line and made it famous before he got shot, the Pontificating Predictifier persists in pointing out that things may look bad now, but they will certainly get worse before his new helicopter is ready to take him around the country giving pep talks about how bad the country they fucked up for the bankers is, and how hard it’s going to be for him to renovate it enough to make it presentable to the ones what brung him.

Frankly, I’m getting sick of it.

I mean really, if I have to watch the Trojan Horse TelePrompTer Reader dump the contents of the Treasury into Wall Street’s private accounts under millions of small donor names for my own good, I want my freakin’ pony.

And, knock off the Sad Sorry Soothsayer schtick.  At least promise me pretty rainbows and sunshine even if I am headed straight to hell on my unicorn pony.   A pony’s better than a handbasket, and a dream is better than nothing.  Hell, even bullshit dreams backed by big bank can buy presidents.

After all, Mr. President, you promised.

Who’s Robert Wolf?

During one late night/early morning informal discussion on The Confluence, the name Robert Wolf, and his influence on Barack Obama, came up.  To be honest, I didn’t know Robert Wolf from the man in the moon, and still don’t.  However, I have looked into the question of whether or not he might be “the guy” who’s responsible for foisting the fraud that is our current president onto our nation via our easily bedazzled and bamboozled breth-and sist-ren, and, have concluded, probably not.  Though, he is a rather strong candidate, worthy of PUMA scrutiny and investigation.

Robert Wolf is the President and Chief Operating Officer of UBS Investment Bank, as well as Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of UBS Group for the Americas.  That comes straight from the UBS website.  The company is a global financial institution based in Switzerland, whose name (USB) comes from it’s original, pre-merger with Swiss Bank Corporation name, Union Bank of Switzerland.  The AG is initialized form of a Swiss word basically meaning shareholder corporation.   UBS AG, along with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley are among the financial groups who gave Googles of money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, either through employee contributions, direct personal donations, contributions to PACs, and/or bundling.  Wolf’s and UBS’ political contributions to date can be tracked here, here, and here.

On February 6, White House.gov posted a press release announcing President Black Obama’s newly established Economic Advisory Board, designed to brief the president as he makes up an economic strategy on the fly, then tries to sell it on the campaign trail and run it up the public opinion flagpole and Chris Matthews’ leg, as David Axelrod runs focus groups whose results he can doctor and leak to the press.  The board will tell him what to do for two years, then he will revisit the question of extending their term of service and basically do whatever they tell him to do.  (Okay, the press release doesn’t exactly say that, but, c’mon, we know what’s up.)  Anyway, besides Paul Volcker, Penny (first Commerce Secretary name withdrawn) Pritzker, and Austan (NAFTAgate) Goolsbee, the most interesting name on the list was…(drumroll, please)…Robert Wolf (rim shot).

Obama met Wolf in December of 2005 at a George Soros-sponsored “meet the bundlers” matinee soiree, and, according to an April 16, 2007,  New York Magazine article, it was man love at first sight.  Conversation was had, numbers were exchanged and a relationship was born. To make a long story boring, seems both were a little miffed at the “old school” dominance of the stuck up, cocky Clinton Machine, so the ambitious Obama jumped aboard the put out, mega-rich, political playa wannabe’s train, and together, they formed a younger rainbow money posse and rode off into the sunset, creatively plotting to take over the world with their new, invigorating “hopey changeness.”

Except…

Since it was George Soros’ party, and Soros supported Obama, it seems likely to me that,  if there was a big player to exploit, Soros put the “suck up to that guy” bug in Obie’s ear.  Also, a Washingtom Post article dated 2 days later, had already identified Goldman Sachs as Obama’s biggest donor, a title I don’t think GS ever relinquished.  At that time, WaPo listed Obie’s Big Givers as:

The figures reflect giving from the employees of Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, as well as Goldman and UBS. Goldman employees gave about 50 percent more to presidential hopefuls than the next-highest set of givers, at Citigroup.

Remember, this is April ‘07 we’re talking here, before a single primary/caucus vote was cast/stolen.  It’s doubtful that Wolf was able to snooker so much financial support from his business rivals unless there’s been some major collusion going on for quite some time.

Which is possible…

According to Wikipedia, Wolf assumed his current position as Chief Operating Officer with UBS in January, 2007.  After a company shakeup in October of 2007, due to a “writedown” caused by the “deteriorating conditions in the US sub prime residential mortgage market,” Wolf was named President, Investment Bank.  May, 2008 saw more UBS writedowns and job losses.

In the midst of our world-wide economic crisis the story of the troubles UBS is currently facing is not getting quite the attention it deserves.  One of the skeletons in Obama’s closet is that the banking conglomerate which employs one of the President of the United States’ financial advisers is currently under investigation for income tax evasion, which could have major implications for the entire banking industry and global reprecussions.

In February of last year, Reuters quoted a Wall Street Journal report that UBS was facing “subprime mortgage investigations:”

U.S. government prosecutors are investigating whether Swiss banking giant UBS misled investors by reporting inflated prices of mortgage-backed securities it held despite knowing those valuations had eroded, the Wall Street Journal said on Saturday.

According to a May 7, 2008 Bloomberg piece, the company was facing a tax probe:

UBS AG, the world’s biggest money manager for rich individuals, said the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether the Swiss bank helped clients evade American taxes.

One senior bank employee was “briefly detained” by U.S. authorities as a “material witness,” the firm said in an e- mailed statement. The Financial Times reported that the employee was Martin Liechti, the Zurich-based head of UBS’s international wealth management business for the Americas. Rohini Pragasam, a UBS spokeswoman in New York, declined to comment on the FT report. Liechti could not immediately be reached for comment.

In June, ex-UBS employee, Bradley Birkenfeld plead guilty to charges against him that had been filed in May, that he was “incetivized” by the company to help clients hide assets.  By July, ABC was reporting that Senator Carl Levin was going after the company for helping US tax cheats hide taxable assets, and wanted the company shut down.  In November, another UBS big shot, Raoul Weil, was indicted in Miami for doing the same thing for a lot more clients.  In December, WSJ reported that the Feds had added Credit Suisse and HSBC to the probe list.

Now, in a series of rather confusing developments, USB has agreed to pay 780 million dollars in fines and open up its hallowed books to the government’s prying eyes.  Despite the agreement however, Raoul Weil is still being sought separately, and still considered a fugitive, as he has been since January.  It also seems that the Internal Revenue Service/Department of Justice has initiated a separate civil suit seeking enforcement of a “John Doe” summons that would require the company to reveal the names of up to 52,000 American customers.   The official UBS statement can be found here.

While there is no shortage of Soros conspiracy theories, some of them, regarding Obama and the Soros-backed, John Podesta-led Center for American Progress, of which Tom Daschle was a Distinguished Fellow, have even been explored here, I don’t think Soros is “the guy” anymore than I think Wolf is.  Unless Wolf has some secret plan to take down his own company from the inside, I can’t see how his Obama investment money has been well spent.  I do think that, as was pointed out in the PBS special “Inside the Meltdown,” the whole credit crisis was rumor generated, so that it, and all the other social media, internet, financial, political, and other manipulation that so fortuitously worked to Obama’s advantage could have been implemented by one savvy guy with his ear to the ground, his finger on the nation’s pulse, and a brick-sized chip on his shoulder.  I also believe there is such a guy, but his name ain’t George or Robert.

Buncha Bigots

Eric Holder, America’s first African American Attorney General under America’s first black President, said in a speech to Department of Justice employees celebrating Black History Month, that we are a “nation of cowards“  because we don’t like to talk candidly about race.  This is wrong on so many levels.

Any time we still have to describe people and their accomplishments as “history making” based on skin color, we have a problem with race.  It’s 2009, for Goodness sakes, and we still have cause to celebrate racial “firsts.”  Not only that, we’ve barely scratched the surface; we have yet to have our “first black” lots of things, like, Senate Majority Leader; hell we’ve barely had any black Senators, given that the nation’s fifth is now president.  We, as a nation, have never had a Native American much of anything politically significant, either; the same is true for many other racially diverse groups.  And, as we all know, our history regarding women’s history, contributions, and employment issues, not to mention those of LGBT people living openly, and people living with disabilities, is woefully deficient.

But, does not talking about it make us cowards?  What good does endless recriminatory discussion do?  Does that really advance anybody’s cause, or does it merely inflame passions needlessly?

In this little community we’ve established here in this little corner of the blogosphere, nobody is required to declare their race, ethnicity, gender, or anything else, nor are they expected to check them at the door, unless they choose to, and we seem to get along pretty well.  Our commonality is based on things other than physical characteristics, like opinion and ideology.  How we think and feel is much more important than how we look, love or pee.

Barack Obama should not be president because he’s black, Eric Holder should not be attorney general for that reason, either.  Because that issue was promoted as justification for their attaining their respective positions, many of us were offended, while, to be honest, many more felt vindicated.  The disappointment was not limited to people of any particular group, though African Americans disproportionately embraced the counter opinion.  Just as many men felt, and still feel, that Hillary Clinton was the better Democratic choice, and many white Republicans felt similarly about John McCain, many black Americans, like me, feel that Barack Obama was not.  Race and gender most often had nothing to do with it.

I call our president Black Obama because his racial background played far too large a part in his election.  When he secured the nomination of his party, fraudulently in my opinion, that fraud was validated by “the historic nature of his candidacy,” blah, blah, blah.  His, and his campaign’s, deliberate, subtle, and blatant exploitation of his racial background was shameful to me.   Race should never trump integrity.  Just because we’ve never had a black president is no reason to embrace this one.

Yet, once he was elected, all sorts of racial baggage was either laid at his feet, or more often, exonerated, while the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement’s triumphs was awarded to him simply because of who his father happened to be.  His own lack of accomplishment, experience, preparedness and qualification was magically rendered irrelevant because he’s a black man.

Seems to me, as long as all we’re expected to do is talk about what’s wrong, and what has been wrong in the past, those things will continue to happen, and continue to be wrong.  Once we decide that these things don’t deserve discussion, contemplation, or consideration, there won’t be anything to talk about, anyway.  When it comes to equality and diversity, let’s all just shut up and do the damned thing.

That being said, when racism, sexism and/or any other “-ism” rears its ugly head, it should be immediately, and uncategorically, rejected by all.  The only caveat, and it’s a big one, is that “-isms” are like pornography, hard to define quantitatively.  While we claim to know it when we see it, ultimately, offense is in the eye of the beholder.  On those occasions, just like any other when one experiences hurt at the hands of another, protest is only to be expected.  Yet that protest should be limited to that particular incident; revisiting old issues only opens old wounds and diverts attention from the problem at hand, greatly increasing the odds that nothing will be resolved.  “You hurt my feelings,” will usually result in an immediate apology, “you always hurt my feelings,” will probably result in a fight.

Eric Holder said:

…”we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”

I think he’s half right; we, as average Americans, don’t talk to each other, period.  If we did, race would probably never come up.  And when, and if, it did, we’d probably be able to work it out.

Transparency In The Dark

President Black Obama has a funny way of being transparent, according to Politico.  Yesterday, the Blog o’ Politics reported that executive orders once routinely announced by previous administrations, were issued by the new administration with “nary a mention from the White House press corps:”

They came to light only because the official paperwork was transmitted to the Federal Register, a dense daily compendium of regulatory actions and other formal notices prepared by the National Archives. They were published there several days after the fact.

A Politico review of Federal Register issuances since Obama took office found three executive orders, one presidential memorandum, one presidential notice, and one proclamation that went unannounced by the White House.

Among the most interesting of these orders was one regarding the National Economic Council:

One order Obama signed Feb. 5 expanded the National Economic Council to 25 people by adding the Secretary of Health and Human Services; Secretary of Education Arne Duncan; senior adviser Valerie Jarrett; “climate czar” Carol Browner and two other officials.

Gee, I wonder why that wasn’t announced in one of Obama’s endless stage managed preenings to the press?  Spokesman Ben LaBolt told Politico it was a “simple oversight,” and that the orders were added to the White House website Tuesday night, after Politico’s inquiry.

On Monday, the Associated Press reported that the Obama administration is actively fighting to keep certain secrets secret:

Despite President Obama’s vow to open government more than ever, the Justice Department is defending Bush administration decisions to keep secret many documents about domestic wiretapping, data collection on travelers and U.S. citizens, and interrogation of suspected terrorists.

In half a dozen lawsuits, Justice lawyers have opposed formal motions or spurned out-of-court offers to delay court action until the new administration rewrites Freedom of Information Act guidelines and decides whether the new rules might allow the public to see more.

Also, CQ Politics is reporting that in spite of the unveiling of Obama’s much touted housing plans, some details were held back:

But the guidelines for exactly which mortgages would be eligible were not released. Administration officials said the Treasury Department is working to develop uniform guidance across the industry, working closely with banking agencies and following the lead of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Those details likely will decide how widespread participation will be in the plan.

White House.gov promises those details will be released March 4:

Complete eligibility details will be announced on March 4th when the program starts. The criteria for eligibility will include having sufficient income to make the new payment and an acceptable mortgage payment history. The program is limited to loans held or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

So set your watches, mark your calendars, and hope and pray that this time, they don’t just forget, get too caught up in making speeches about other stuff, or simply get in a rush to pass a big stimulus bill to keep their word.  After all, we were warned.

NOTE: In the following video of Obama’s Mesa, Arizona, Dobson High School performance take note of the applause on cue.  Every talk show, game show, or any other television production filmed or taped in front of a live audience, always has a stage manager on the floor cuing the audience to respond appropriately, sometimes going so far as to hold up signs saying, “Awwww,” “Boooo,” “Yay,” or other emotional directives, besides “Applaud.”  Seems the “Teflon TelePrompTer Reader’s Travelin’ Obie Show” might not be much different.

How Burris Probably Got The Job

Illinois Senator Roland (Like It Or Not) Burris is in hot water with the Chicago press gone viral, Illinois Republicans, and the easily lead, all up in arms about previously undisclosed conversations he had with former Governor Rod (Cabbage Patch Weeble)  Blagojevich’s surrogates prior to his eventual appointment.  Burris, force-fed to the Senate by the teed-off Hair Bear, is accused of talking about ineffectively trying to raise the paltry sum of $15,000 for Blagojevich while the governor was allegedly trying to auction off the “juicy plum” of former Senator, now President, Barack Obama’s hurriedly vacated seat to the highest bidder.  The clueless Burris, who most likely was never in contention for the seat before Blago decided to give those he saw as drunken, vengeful incompetents a big “eff ewe,” neglected to mention the Blago camps’ fundraising requests to the Illinois House impeachment committee when he was dragged on the carpet prior to his confirmation.  Therefore, in the eyes of his detractors, he’s a liar, and thus, must go.

Sure, Burris always wanted the job; he seems to be a nice-enough, largely irrelevant, intensely ambitious, fuzzy little man, whose delusions of grandeur have probably always simultaneously been both his Achilles heel and his most endearing quality.  Let’s face it, all in all Burris, is a joke.  Blags and Co. probably always saw him that way, too.  That’s the beauty of his appointment.

And, there’s not much doubt that the manipulative Blago Crew would gleefully exploit whatever meager assets Burris had to offer to their advantage, that seems to be a large part of the Blagojevich modus operandi, as well as his ultimate undoing.  The sticking point is, if Burris thought he had anything to bring to the table that would even rate him consideration for a Senate appointment during Blagojevich’s serious deliberations about the matter, he was probably just kidding himself, and Blago’s Boyz were most likely stringing him along.

One can only imagine the private conversations re: Burris in BlagoWorld:

Unnamed Blago Staffer: Burris called.

Blago: Who?

Unnamed Blago Staffer: Burris. Roland.  You know, the funny little guy…

Blago: Yeah, yeah, I know.  I’m just yanking your chain, Unnamed.  Whaddid he want?

Unnamed Blago Staffer: The Senate seat.

(Raucus pirateer laughter all around)

Blago (wiping tears): The Senate seat?  The Senate seat?  Oh, man, are you f*cking kidding me?  What’s he offering, like, ten grand?

Unnamed Blago Staffer: Fifteen.

(More raucus pirateer laughter)

Blago (getting up from floor): Oh, man, cut it out!  You’re killin’ me, here!  Fifteen grand?  Fifteen f*cking measly grand?  Burris?  Wooo-hooo, man, I’m dyin’ here! (shakes head) Fif-teen grand? (sobering) Okay, who else ya got?

I’m sure it wasn’t until after Blago got screwed by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s curiously premature arrest without indictment, which robbed Blago of a big payday at the very least, and Fitzgerald of the glory of netting two big fish dead to rights, that Cabbage Patch figured that since he was still Governor, he might as well use Burris to give the Illinois lynch mob the finger before they dragged him into their kangaroo court.

Let’s face it, Burris never raised the fifteen grand anyway; nobody was ever going to give him any money to give to Blagojevich.  C’mon people, think.  This is a bif “eff ewe back” from the big boys playing in the federal government sandbox.  Blago pissed Burris on them with a bigger wanger, and now all the “little wanger” Our Gang members are ganging together to wipe the Burris piss off.

And poor little Roland?  At least he got to be Senator for a little while.  And, it didn’t cost him a cent.

The Great ZerO-Rator

The biggest myth to come out of the 2008 presidential campaign, besides Barack Obama himself, is that his bright, clean, “articulateness” makes him an O-rator Extraordinaire.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The man is so inept as a speaker that he has to take a TelePrompTer into the shower to read a Cardboard Titty Groper-written request in case he runs out of shampoo.  When off TelePrompTer, he bumbles, stumbles, mumbles, “ums,” “ahhhs,” and “ya knows” his way through incomprehensible moot points to their largely illogical conclusions.  Not only is he not even passable as a public speaker, he is a barely competent public reader.  His squinty-eyed, nose-in-the-air, head-swiveling is enough to give a person watching whiplash.  That such inadequate performances as are his stock-in-trade have become celebrated examples of oratorical superiority is more of a testament to the determined application of the “skill” of the pervasive, sycophantic, Axelrod-extorted, ego-stroked, so-called mainstream media and  blogosphere, recruited by the President’s Puppeteer to do his bidding, than to the “talent” of the Spokesmodel-in-Chief.  In other words, as a public speaker, Obama sucks.

Dean Barnett, writing for the Weekly Standard, got on to Obama’s “secret” lack of inherent verbal ability after witnessing  the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader performing in Virginia, sans crutch, in February of last year:

Shorn of his Teleprompter, we saw a different Obama. His delivery was halting and unsure. He looked down at his obviously copious notes every few seconds throughout the speech. Unlike the typical Obama oration where the words flow with unparalleled fluidity, he stumbled over his phrasing repeatedly.

Being Teflon, Obama’s inept speechifying wasn’t enough to cause even the conservative Barnett to overly critique his performance based on his all too obvious lack of speaking skills, it was the fact that when off-script, Obama reveals much more of his true personality than friend or foe would be comfortable with:

What makes Obama’s Jefferson-Jackson speech especially relevant is where he went when he went off script. The unifying Obama who has impressed so many people during this campaign season vanished, replaced by just another angry liberal railing against George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Exxon Mobil, and other long standing Democratic piñatas. The pressing question that Obama’s decidedly uninspiring Jefferson-Jackson oratory raises is which Obama is the real Obama–the one who read beautifully crafted words from a Teleprompter after his victory in Iowa, or the tediously angry liberal who improvised in Virginia?

With his Biden-esque tendency to gaffe (it’s a verb) about his Muslim faith in all 57 states, Knucklehead Smiff’s Shari Lewis (yeah, I know) realized the extent of the risk involved with continuing to allow his Frankenstienian creation  loose on the campaign trail TelePrompTer-less, so the Puppet Master took the unprecedented step of sending Marble Mouth’s best friend on the road with him.  From CNN, September, 2008:

It appears Barack Obama’s teleprompter is hitting the campaign trail.

The Democratic presidential nominee has never tried to hide the fact he delivers speeches off the device, though normally he doesn’t use one at standard campaign rallies and town hall events.

But the Illinois senator used a teleprompter at both his Colorado events Monday — making for a particularly peculiar scene in Pueblo, where the prompter was set up in the middle of what is normally a rodeo ring.

Now, according to the American Spectator, the Obamessiah’s performance was so lacking in his first press conference as president since the training wheels came off, even with his trusty prop, that Papa Smurf’n'Astroturf has patenalisticly provided his pride and joy with a podium mounted ‘PrompTer, so he’ll never have to speak alone:

To that end, he says, the White House is looking to install a small video or computer screen into the podium used by the president for press conferences and events in the White House. “It would make it easier for the comms guys to pass along information without being obvious about it,” says the adviser.

The screen would indicate whom to call on, seat placement for journalists, pass along notes or points to hit, and so forth, says the adviser.

Using a screen is nothing new for Obama; almost nothing he said in supposedly unscripted townhall events during the presidential campaign was unscripted, down to many of the questions and the answers to those questions. Teleprompter screens at the events scrolled not only his opening remarks, but also statistics and information he could use to answer questions.

The folks at SGW Teleprompter Solutions give many examples of services they offer, but, so far, no in-podium mounts.  I wonder how long it will take the Obamaster to get the hang of using his new toy, since he’s barely gotten the hang of using the old one in the five years he’s had to adapt to it.  Yep, according to this Chicago Magazine June, 2007 behind-the-scenes profile of Obuhbuh’s 2004 rock ‘em, sock ‘em reading debut at the Democratic National Convention, that was the first time he’d used one:

Obama, who prefers speaking extemporaneously, had no experience working with a teleprompter or addressing a group this loud and lively. Michael Sheehan, a Washington speech coach who advised Obama, says the prime-time convention speeches are “unexpectedly hard for several reasons: The noise is overwhelming, and on top of it, you’re speaking to three audiences at a time: the live audience; the big JumboTron in the convention hall; and to the TV cameras. It’s a juggling act.”

Obama struggled early on to master the mechanics of this new speaking environment. First, he had to train himself to read the words off the teleprompter screens without having it look or sound as if he were reading. He also had to adjust his speaking style. “There’s this impulse with these big, live speeches to orate as if you’re on a podium in the town square,” says Axelrod. “When you’re giving these speeches, you’re speaking not just to the crowd but primarily to a TV audience, and the microphone does all the work for you, so you don’t need to bellow.”

Good thing Big Daddy Axelrove was there to hold the handlebars as he took his maiden ride around the national political block, huh?  I guess when you’re the first black Charlie McCarthy in the White House, it must be a tremendous comfort to know that the Candice Bergen’s dad hand up your back is only a glance left, down, and to the right away.

Like a lot of folks, I’ve had fun skewering That One’s prompter dependence in the past, and look forward to many more happy blogging hours in the future.  ‘Til then, the wheels on the bus…

Obama Keeps A Promise

The news media is all a-twitter about President Black Obama’s decision to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan, like this is something new.  All accounts suggest the decision is in response to a standing request by General David McKiernan, but, it seems more likely to be a campaign promise fulfilled.  In his own words, here’s what he said in the New York Times in July:

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

In January of 2008, the video below was posted on You Tube, and, though he has been accused of blowing off Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the subject, going after Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan is probably the one thing Barack Obama has been consistent about since Day One.

Save Or Create Bamboozle

“We need to save or create 80 gazillion jobs…” ” This plan will save or create umpty million American jobs…”  The stimulus plan will “save or create about 3,5 million jobs…“  As the Smartest Black Guy Ever Elected President of the Greatest Young Nation in the World prepares to sign the Biggest Spending Bill in History that he hasn’t even read in Denver because it’s just so freakin’ cool to sign a really huge spending plan a month after you take office as the Greatest Black Guy on the Planet Ever to be Elected President of the Most Wonderfullest Post-Racial Country Ever Stolen from Indigenous People in the place where you were nominated after running a really cool Mac vs. PC- type ad campaign and only cheating a couple of times when it was really important, he keeps saying he’s going to “save or create” X number of jobs, and people just go “doo do dooo do doo, save or create, oh, yeah, dooo do dooo do…”

DON’T YOU SEE THEY THINK YOU ARE EITHER FUCKING NUTS, JUST LAZY, OR BRAIN DEAD, PEOPLE?

Sorry, but “save or create” frosts my cookies, and, if you knew me, you’d know my cookies are pretty well frosted most of the time, as it is.  But, that’s neither here nor there.  The point is, “save or create” is such obvious doublespeak, and it’s not even good doublespeak, so why do we, as a nation, as a people united in economic crisis, let it go?

When you say “save or create 3.5 million jobs,” all that means is that after whatever arbitrary time limit you impose, if at least 3.5 million people, out of the approximately 140 million currently employed , are still employed, you win.  You could lose every other job there ever was, or might, or could have been, if 3.5 million people are still employed at the end of say, 6 months, you’re a hero, in some alternate universe, warped perspective, shared national suck on Michael Phelps’ bong full of Alex Rodriguez steroids-enhanced KoolAid flavored hopium in the front seat of Chris Brown’s luxury rent-a-car kind of way.

So, while we celebrate the Spokesmodel-in-Chief’s historic victory of getting his record setting stimulus bill through a lopsided, blindfolded, Democratic  Congress, and signed into law exactly 4 weeks to the day he bored everybody silly on the steps of the nation’s capitol after stumbling through the Oath of Office the first time, let us all join hands across cyberspace in that purely symbolic Astroturfing way our Professor President so thoroughly embodies, to honor the achievement of convincing the vast majority of Americans that even if 99% of them lost their jobs, their Teflon TelePrompTer Reader Leader would still have delivered on his empty promise that they bought hook, line, and sinker, and sing in the words of that new Negro spiritual, “Keep Hopium Alive!  Keep Hopium Alive!  Thank God Almighty, Keep Hopium Alive!”

Dooo doo do dooo dooooooooo…

Or something like that.

Selling ObamaLove

Does the public find Spokesmodel-in-Chief, Black Obama, sexy?  If you judge by the number of opinion pieces detailing soft-core porn, semi-erotic, reader submitted “dreams” about him, or music videos proclaiming “crushes” on him, you’d probably say “yes.”  However, if you Google, “Barack Obama sexy” and carefully read the predictably high number of hits, only to discover that most of them are responses and commentary on the two examples given, you’d have to determine the answer is, “not so much.”

Now, anyone who has spent any amount of time researching the Nations’ Neophyte President knows that for some reason, Google searches always return an incredibly high number of responses favorable to him.  Go figure.  But, as is often the case, these results can be misleading.  If one examines those results carefully, it is possible to find some rather interesting information.

The question of Oboyhe’scute’s “sex appeal” arose aroused came up today from a reader comment on my last post from “Laree” who claimed she didn’t get the attraction after reading Michelle Malkin’s quote from a love-struck Obamite buried in a Peoria Star Journal article about the President’s visit to a Catepillar-sponsored event last Thursday:

“I see him like he’s my own son, and not in a funny way, either,” Dorothy Tisdale, a 73-year-old Peorian, said in reference to President Obama. She was the same woman who, after Obama’s motorcade passed her, said the experience was “better than having sex.”

Though older women, like Golden Girls’ Betty White, and the aging schoolgirls on The View seem to agree that Obutno is sexy, and Arianna Huffington is determined to publish any and every little thing that hints of Obama studliness, the recurring theme of his dubious “sexiness” bears investigation.  The earliest example that comes to mind is the “I Got A Crush On Obama” You Tube (Google owned) video.  Bear in mind that Google, one of Obama’s largest donors, whose CEO is an Obama advisor, announced its You Tube acquisition October 9, 2006.  The Washington Post reported Obama announced his formation of a “presidential exploratory committee” January 17, 2007, with intentions to formally announce his candidacy on February 10 of that year.  On May 27, 2007, the Washington Post told us that Howard Dean’s former “all around web guy,” Joe Rospars, ran a staff of 11 out of  Barack Obama’s Chicago headquarters.

Joe Rospars today is listed as Program Director and Founding Partner of Blue State Digital, Obama’s online website and development consultants responsible for Obama for America or Organizing for America, Obama’s campaign site now under the auspices of the Democratic National Committee.  Blue State was founded by refugees from Howard Dean’s campaign trained at the knee of Dean’s personal ‘net pioneer, Joe Trippi.

On Blue State Digital’s OFA website however, they claim that Rospars’ 2004 founded company was hired by the Obama campaign in 2006.  But, Business Week says that the company, which has also worked for George Soros, was hired by Team Obama in February of 2007, nine days before Obie launched his campaign.  At any rate, on March 5, 2007, the anti-Hillary Clinton, pro-Obama unauthorized, “Hillary 1984” You Tube video mysteriously debuted, accredited only to ParkRidge47, with “I Got A Crush On Obama” following shortly thereafter.

techPresident’s Micah Sifry investigated the mystery of the 1984 You Tube fueled “Barocket” launch, March 19, concluding, along with his blog readers, that the video had to have come from the Obama camp.  Sifry, along with the San Francisco Chronicle, linked above, was ultimately proven correct after the Huffington Post outed ParkRidge47 as Phillip de Vellis, an employee of, you guessed it, Blue State Digital.  de Vellis came clean in a subsequent HuffPo post, claiming that he made the video in his basement and uploaded it to You Tube without BSD’s knowledge or authorization.  Sure.  He was fired, and that, as they say, was that.

Except…

In late September, during the general election, an eerily similar event occurred regarding a Palin-bashing video.   The Jawa Report exposed Winner and Associates’, Ethan Winner, employee and son of the public relations company founder and Axelrod associate, Charles Winner, as the producer of this video, now removed by You Tube, featuring a voice-over artist often employed by David Axelrod.  After the evidence surfaced, Winner, a known Obama supporter, sent an email to the Jawa Report, claiming he made the video on his own, without knowledge or authorization of anybody in his dad’s company, and the distinctive voice-over artist, who had never worked for David Axelrod (how would he know?) was hired by him.  Of course.

So, now we go back to “I Got A Crush On Obama,” the first of a series of videos that launched the ObamaLove campaign.  Supposedly, yet another independent singer/songwriter/producer was so smitten with political lust that she and her partner hired an actress to lipsync her Obama anthem and post it on the internet for free, not long after the freshman Senator tossed his hat in the ring.  Oh.  Yeah.

Though HuffPo reported on outing of the “Crush” video producers, Barely Political, which was later purchased by Fred Seibert’s Next New Networks, it was ABC News they quoted:

The song was performed by Leah Kauffman, a 21-year-old undergraduate at Temple University in Philadelphia, who wrote the lyrics with a friend, 32-year-old advertising executive Ben Relles, and the music with her producer, Rick Friedrich.

An actress/model named Amber Lee Ettinger then lip-synched the song for the video, shot by filmmakers found on Craigslist two hours before Relles and Ettinger hit New York City one Friday in May to shoot the video on a DV camera.

“Not including the hours we spent working on it, it probably cost a couple thousand dollars,” said Relles, a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, who said he did it for fun, not money, but is also selling “Obamagirl” and “I Got a Crush on Obama” T-shirts.

The “Crush” crew’s Relles asserted that they invested their time and money into the project and posted it on their new You Tube page June 10, 2007, in response to a Hillary Clinton songwriting contest they found on her campaign website.  Huh?  Like me, but long before me, and without my knowledge until I researched this post, Gregory Chang of Stop Obama, came to the same “Crush crew must be Axelrod astroturf” conclusion I did, for pretty much the same reasons, only he got there in April of last year.

Back to Joe Rospars‘, Obama’s embedded Blue State Digital, Joe Trippi trained, web guru.  Rospars’ the guy who commandeered Joe Anthony’s independent MySpace profile.  This January 8, 2009, Boston Globe article gives a bit of insight into the incestuous relationship between Joe Trippi and all his computer-geek spawn, including Boston native Jascha Franklin-Hodge of Blue State, and the impact of the exploitation of their talents and techniques upon the Obama campaign and administration, as well as politics of the fuure in general.

While the Obama Machine has denied involvement with “I Got A Crush On Obama,” there’s no doubt they have exploited the viral video to promote his sex appeal to young, female voters.  Given Joe Rospars’ involvement and tactics, it would be more of a stretch to believe that “Obama Girl” was a completely independent production than to suspect that Camp O had a hand in it somehow.  After all, Blue State Digital says that’s the way you do it:

In many cases, there is an opportunity to use an attention-grabbing tactic (such as an innovative online application or a memorable video) to create an online buzz that has the potential to go viral, bringing people into your organization’s orbit much more quickly and organically than could be achieved via a conventional program.  We’ll help you identify and take advantage of these opportunities, so that you can grow more quickly and put your new constituents to use in pursuit of your organizational goals.

On Blue State Digital created mybarackobama.com, now morphed into Organizing for America, you can find other Obama worshippers convinced that not only is he the hottest thing since fire, that heat can make you sexy too.  Now, do you see where ObamaLove is better than sex nonsense came from?

Yep, the guy who loves him the most.

Beware Obama Fatigue

Let’s face it, most PUMAs are sick to death of Barack Obama.  We recoil from the sight and sound of him stumbling through ghost-written, TelePrompTer read  speeches on our television screens, tens, that feel like thousands, of times a day, droning incessantly about something that only he can so successfully make seem like nothing.  And vice-versa.   However, where we once railed against the excessive exposure, shouting at our computers and TVs every time he, his name or likeness popped up in yet another puff or fluff piece of a sad excuse for a print “news” article or op-ed column, or tedious You Tube lecture, or “get your very own useless Obama trinket” commercial, we now just sigh.

We’re simply getting tired.

“Obama fatigue” was all the rage this summer after a Pew poll showed that Obaexposure had reached saturation point.  Coincidently, about a month  thereafter, the economy tanked, an event which diverted attention, and predictably, allowed the Obamachine to go into Obadrive with layers of Axelrod brand Astroturf and effectively counter all the prior negativity.  To allow this sort of signature combat maneuver to continue to go undefended is just as dangerous now as it ever was because it allows crappily written pump ‘n’ prop him up pieces of “ain’t he just the greatest thing since Mickey D’s” drivel to sneak into the public consciousness unchecked, except for rightwing Republican kneejerk “everything he does sucks” often baseless, yet predictable partisan responses, which can be easily refuted.  We PUMAs just cannot afford to be complacent without accepting at least some of the blame for his further chicanery and incompetence.

Frank Rich in the New York Times, and Pamela Gentry in the Huffington Post, both have “hush the Obama naysayers” pieces today touting the Nascent Neophyte’s “triumph” of getting the massive, unread “stimulus bill” through Congress that many economists claim won’t stimulate anything except the libidos of the crooks who porkified and passed it in the dark.  Though Rich’s piece is interminably longer than Gentry’s, both give literary raspberries to those critical of both the bill and the stumblebum method of passage.  According to these two, the mere fact that the bill was passed proves Obiteme is not only not incompetent, he’s shrewd, skillful and he’s smarter than everybody on the planet, to boot.

Of course, the fact that he still doesn’t have a Commerce or Health and Human Services Secretary, and his Treasury Secretary is a tax cheat nobody in the world has confidence in, is not mentioned by either opinionist.  Nor is the fact that Oblahblah and Associates have mounted a “lowered expectations” media campaign relative to his victorious, historic, stimulus bill, while ducking legitimate questions they don’t like.

And, just what is the great accomplishment of which they crow, anyway?  His attempt at bipartisanship was an utter failure, allowing Sen. John McCain, Sen. Lindsay Graham, and young Rep. Aaron Shock to access the airwaves all day Sunday trashing him and it, as John Boehner did on the floor of the House.  In fact, the net effect of the reality of Obama’s support for the bill is that more Democrats voted against it (7 in the House) than Republicans voted for it (3 in the Senate).

The main reason such cheerleading must be countered is that if it is not, the Obama “brand” becomes further entrenched in the American psyche without challenge, which is as fraught with danger as allowing Peanut Corp. to continue selling its products without reporting the salmonella outbreak.  If nobody raises a stink, people will keep right on buying Jiff because they like Mr. Peanut, regardless of the fact that he represents another company.

Kevin Price of BizPlusBlog, someone I know nothing about, underscores my point that the vast majority of Bicardi ‘n’ KoolAid drinkers know next to nothing about politics, and are those deliberately targeted by the Obama campaign, being overly susceptible to “branding.”  Price argues that Obamacamp’s manipulation of  the “gotta do someting, anything’s better than doing nothing, or we’re all gonna die”  or, “the ship is sinking, hurry up and jump aboard!” theme was directed at these folks:

There are two basic views of government. One sees the best government doing as little as possible and being focused on protecting individuals from other individuals and our country from foreign adversaries. The opposite extreme is that government should play a pervasive role in every aspect of our lives and that it should be the primary driver of our economy and society. The vast majority who have an opinion fall some where in between. Far more than those with an actual opinion have no real view at all. Those people are my concern here.

This uniformed majority are the same people who are driving Barack Obama’s extremely high approval ratings. They don’t really know what they are doing, or what they believe, they are merely very sincere. They think some action is, at least, action. But the actions of this administration will take generations to pay off and they promise to make things far worse than better.

Here’s the rub, most PUMAs are not political science majors, either.  We’re simply politically aware bullshit detectors.  The danger we face is that, like most fertilizers, the odor of Obandini can become tolerable with enough constant exposure.  That’s bad enough, but when the super slick fertilizer salesman touts the benefits of using his new chocolate flavored product on store bought vegetables, and even as an ice cream topping, some gullible folks can be persuaded to forget they’re swallowing bullshit whole.  Unfortunately for the rest of us, there are so many more of them.  And they’re more than willing to let the government promote the notion that fecalized fast food is nutritious and delicious while they sell it to us and our children by the pound.

We PUMAs just don’t have the luxury of Obama fatigue.

Burris Blago Headlines Missing Key Phrase

“…in exchange for…”

Nowhere in the approximately three gazillion headlines, or articles following those headlines, I’ve read screaming “Burris Admits Blago Sought Donation,” or words to that effect, does the phrase “in exchange for” appear.

Nowhere.

Since the point is that permanently impeached forever former Governor Rod Blagojevich is accused of trying to auction off President Black Obama’s curiously vacated Senate seat, shouldn’t these indignant headlines and the articles they head do a little more than imply some sort of quid pro quo, pay-to-play, scratch my back shenanigans?

Of course, we are all free to draw the obvious conclusion not-so-subtly pointed to with verbal klaxon “a-oogah” noises and flashing “Shady Doings Here!!!!” signs, but, it would be a lot more damning if the bonds of journalistic integrity allowed the finger-pointing alarmists to actually report that Blagojevich or his agents demanded payment “in exchange for…” something.  Instead, cursory examinations of these rehashings of the Chicago Sun-Times original report suggest that Blago never considered Burris for anything.  At least, not until he decided to screw everybody back.

By all accounts, the initial request by Robert Blagojevich for Burris to help with fundraising came in October, with more contacts with the former Governor’s staff occurring in November, after the election, though it is not so clear if more than one was after Obama resigned his seat.  The Houston Chronicle reports that on November 26, 2008, Burris initiated a call to Blago’s former Chief of Staff, John Harris, where he brought up the Senate seat:

A log of Harris’ calls released to the AP by the governor’s office indicates Burris called Harris four times in November — the last time on Nov. 26, when the log indicates the two spoke. Burris’ affidavit says he had called Harris to recommend his nephew for a state job and during the conversation asked about the Senate seat.

Also by all accounts, on one other call initiated by Robert Blagojevich to Burris to solicit fundraising assistance, Bobby Blags was rebuffed by Burris because he wanted to avoid the appearance of impropriety since he was interested in Obama’s seat.  None report that Robert Blago was amenable to Burris’ suggestion.

Robert Blagojevich’s lawyer, Michael Ettinger, said his client contacted Burris in October to ask him to host a fundraiser for his brother because Burris had contributed in the past, but Burris said he didn’t want to commit before the election. Ettinger said the subject of the Senate seat wasn’t raised.

Ettinger said Robert Blagojevich remembers only one other conversation in November from the governor’s campaign office, which the FBI had wiretapped at the time. He said his client confirmed Burris’ account that he declined the fundraiser because of the potential conflict.

But he also told Ettinger no one on his brother’s staff had ever mentioned Burris as being interested in the seat.

Yet every news source implies something hinky went down, and pushes the growing rumbling for a perjury investigation against Burris for not being forthcoming before he came forth on February 4.  Given that Burris is broke, and that neither he, nor Blagojevich, have any friends in Illinois, especially in the legislature where “palling around” with Blago could cost the state stimulus money, the media anti-rah-rah building against them will likely be successful in bringing them both down.  Never mind that the city that gave us a president who likes to assert his skinny toughness when he brings a gun to a fundraising knifefight to pick up the checks, wears it’s politically corrupt gangster image like a badge of honor, as does he when he’s not rebuffing it by pretending to reform it.

Look, Burris is embarrassingly ambitious, and Blago’s certainly no angel, but, there probably aren’t many cherubic shrinking violets rising from, or, residing in, the muck and mire of Chicago’s political hellhole.  In fact, there probably aren’t any.

Weekend Odds ‘n’ Ends

President Black Obama is crowing like a bantam rooster about his shiny new stimulus bill, as if passing a anything with only 3 Republican votes necessary was as difficult as he and his media took such pains to make it seem.  I mean, really, if he couldn’t have gotten it done, that would be news.  Plus, it probably was not as hard as it might have been if he had actually let anybody read it first.

Anyway, looks like Rod Blagojevich hit his eventual appointee for Oboyi’mgreat’s vacant Senate seat, now Senator, Roland Burris up for cash before picking him.  However, it’s not clear if this really means anything since, as far as I know, Burris was never on the short list until after Blago was arrested, and by all accouts, Burris didn’t give him any money.  Seems Burris was concerned about appearances, given that he really wanted the appointment, even though Blags didn’t seem inclined to give it to him.  Burris wasn’t on U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s published radar, either.

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd was miffed at the Obamessiah earlier this week because of the way the Ofolks manage the press.  In a rather whiny First Read post, Todd gripes that being a “newbie,” he takes offense at being denied unfettered access to press conference attendees, something he sees as a First Amendment issue:

For instance, today, the president gave a speech in the East Room to the business council, an audience of dozens of CEOs and major business leaders in America. As per usual, we’re allowed to watch the event behind a ropeline. Ok, standard procedure for any event for any candidate, let alone a president. But unlike public events, here at the White House, when the event ends, we get no access to the audience unless the audience happens to amble up to the ropeline and chat with the press.

Today, it was so bad that we were kept behind closed doors so that these CEOs and other business leaders could leave without accidentally mingling with us poor press peons. Once the CEOs were clear and escorted downstairs, then we were let out of our East Room pen. And it’s not like we could rush over to the east side of the White House and find anyone left to interview about their role on this business council. By the time, a member of the press leaves out the one exit they can come in and out of, those guys and gals would be history. I’m sure most of them had cars at the ready to quickly get them to their next meeting.

Poor Chuck, he obviously didn’t get the Official ObamaRules handbook that spells out that only the appearance of transparency can be tolerated.  He also didn’t get the MSNBO Official ObamaRulebook spelling out that the Leg Tingler must never be criticized by any employee, something his commenters were quick to point out, calling him a “freakin’ crybaby,” and assuring him nobody gave a shit about his hurt feelings, which to them are no more important than that pesky First Amendment thingy when it comes to Obamaman.

Underscoring MSNBC readers’ sentiments, Politico reports that it matters not one little whit what the Great Obandini does, people who vote love his dirty drawers and can’t wait to suck down as much of his KoolAid flavored bathwater as he deigns to distribute.  In spite of all the documented Dagwood Bumstead-style bungles, stumbles, bumps and missteps of the neophyte Spokesmodel-In-Chief, his approval ratings are still off the charts.  Go figure.  Maybe they should poll the PUMAsphere, huh?

Meanwhile, in an underreported story from February 9, it seems Chicago school children are afraid to go to school for fear the teachers, not other students, will beat the crap out of them:

Hundreds of students have allegedly been beaten by teachers, coaches and staff at Chicago Public Schools. 2 Investigator Dave Savini continues his ongoing investigation involving the illegal use corporal punishment.

CBS2Chicago’s Savini reports finding an alarming number (eight hundred eighteen) of assaults against students, mostly going under-punished by authorities:

The 2 Investigators found reports of students beaten with broomsticks, whipped with belts, yard sticks, struck with staplers, choked, stomped on and pushed down stairs. One substitute teacher even fractured a student’s neck.

But even more alarming, in the vast majority of cases, teachers found guilty were only given a slap on the wrist.

This report comes on the heels of a February 4 report of the death of a 10 year old Evanston, Illinois student found hanging from a coat hook.  The death was ruled a suicide, a finding with which the family disagrees.

What else?  Oh, California’s broke, so they’re going to let all the prisoners go.  Wonder if Obie’s Big Give and that Big Bailout of Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) will help Chicago’s children or the citizens of California sleep better at night?

Illinois State University wants to know if the bell tolls for Black History Month now that the president is black.  According to MSNBC, the jury’s still out on that one, which seems to tick this guy off.   The New York Times prints an opinion piece by Alaa Al Aswany who complains that though Egyptian Muslims have love for Obama, they’re not feeling the love back, while our friend Sugar sounds off about the beheading of an American Muslim woman in Buffalo, New York by her jilted husband.  Murphy cries for all of us about this and other things over at Puma Pac.

The peanut people still want you to feed their product to your kids even though they recalled peanut butter cookie dough from Austin, Texas schools today.  Good thing the good folks at the Associated Press provide us with this handy list.  Not sure if it matches this one, though.   Oh, and mark your calenders, Peanut Butter and Jelly Day’s a-comin’ March 4.

And, last, but not least, the Obama family clebrates Valentine’s Day in the Rezko-subsidized Hyde Park empty house the president dramatically told goodbye just a few weeks ago.  Must be cold sleeping on bare floors.  Leaving his family to brave the elements without furniture in a barren home, the Persnickety President visited his friend’s gym.  What’s up with that?

Anyway, that’s just a  taste of the juicy little tidbits I tend to pick up news surfing week to week.  So, for those of you with Valentines to share the day (and night) with, enjoy.  For those, like me, who will spend the day cursing the Fates and shooting daggers from our eyes at the lovestruck, between loud verbal declarations of the foolishness of voluntarily plunging oneself into the pitfalls of romance, have a Scotch on me.

Play it, Sam…

(slow and sexy)

…and, the wheels on the bus…

Obie’s Big Gamble

Now that President Black Obama’s huge “stimulus plan” down payment on the country’s economic recovery has cleared Congress without a vote to spare, it has become quite clear that the Republicans have set him up to sink or swim on his own.   If it works, he’a a hero, if not, well, they’re banking it won’t.  In the biggest “duh” moment ever, even Rahm Emanuel and Arlen Specter agree on that.  Maybe that’s the very definition of “bipartisanship,” even though they express it differently.

Rahmbo says Obama “lost control” of the debate by reaching across the aisle and getting his hand slapped silly:

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel conceded President Barack Obama and his team lost control of the message for selling their massive stimulus bill last week, fixating on bipartisanship while Republicans were savaging the legislation.

Duh.

Of course trying to bully Republicans into accepting some of the blame for the potential failure without promising a share of the possible rewards in an attempt to make them look uncooperative was amateurish and a mistake.   Maybe that kind of obviously hollow gesture is what Obie had in mind when he talked about “transparency.”  Democrats didn’t need overwhelming support from the other side, it was stupid to waste time trying to play baby politics with the big boys.  The best move all along would have been for the Obacrats to be the Big Boyz on the Block, like they ended up doing.  They were always going to have to own the results, no matter what the Republicans say, that’s what it means to have a majority.  Unless Obie thought his Dem support was always shaky, there was no need to be overly conciliatory in the first place.

Arlen Specter, along with two other “centrist” Republicans, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, probably would have ended up voting for the bill, anyway.  Since Emanuel says Obie got “90 percent” of what he wanted, perhaps fewer  concessions could have been made to those three Senators without even giving up as much as they did.  In the political poker game the Republicans have to play with their crappy hand, backing off the pot and letting the Dems bluff each other out was the only play.  Specter said as much:

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who broke with his party to support President Obama’s stimulus package last week, said before the final vote Friday that more of his colleagues would have joined were they not afraid of the political consequences.

edit

“I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation,” he said.

Double duh.

With Obama being so publicly rebuffed by the Republicans, and seeming to be at odds with factions of his own party at times, he has assured himself all the glory should their be any, while setting himself up as a solitary goat if there isn’t.  Had he concentrated more on partisanship, and promoting a united Democratic front, at least he could hide behind his team if his bill tanks.  Now, Pelosi, Reid and the gang have an out, and will hang him out to dry in a heartbeat, should the need arise.

Obama also faces virtually the same scenario going forward, making it clear that the stimulus is a first step of many he envisions as necessary.  Due to unveil a “foreclosure plan” next Wednesday, probably sooner than he’d like, given the big banks’ voluntary foreclosure moratorium in the wake of their public Congressional spanking, his staff is already putting out the “don’t expect miracles” vibe:

The White House cautioned Americans on Friday against having unreasonable expectations about President Barack Obama’s plan to stem home foreclosures, which he is due to unveil on Wednesday.

Lowered expectations for Obanomics might work for Obamaniacs here at home, but they suck globally, as Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) is finding out at the “downbeat” G7 summit in Rome:

Geithner was set to discuss his vast US financial stabilization plan, which received a sceptical reaction in the United States and has prompted calls for more details.

“There is still some need for more elaboration” on the US financial plan, Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters in Rome as ministers gathered for the G7 opening dinner on Friday evening.

Obama’s reluctance to put himself forward as “Da Man” does nothing to mitigate against the fact that he is.  As president, he gets no cover.  If he is a right leaning Democrat, an undercover liberal, a Republican Trojan horse, or a Marxist/Socialist/Commie/Pinko, he’s soon going to have to strut his true colors boldly, with pride, whatever they are.  Otherwise, he will always be seen as a wishy-washy, wimpy wuss, no matter how his plans work out.

When you shoot craps, even with somebody else’s chips, it’s your ass on the line, win or lose, if you let it ride.

Done Deal

AP is reporting Obama’s stimulus plan that nobody had time to read is now a done deal.  Sherrrod Brown cast the sixtieth vote necessary:

The Democratic-controlled Congress has passed a $787 billion economic stimulus bill designed to attack the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, handing a victory to President Barack Obama.

Another AP article has a little more detail:

In a major victory for President Barack Obama, Democrats muscled a huge, $787 billion stimulus bill through Congress late Friday night in hopes of combating the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Republican opposition was nearly unanimous.

The Senate approved the measure 60-38 with three GOP moderates providing crucial support. Hours earlier, the House vote was 246-183, with all Republicans opposed to the package of tax cuts and federal spending that Obama has made the centerpiece of his plan for economic recovery.

Despite Obama’s superfluous bipartisan outreach, the Democrats now own this Friday, the 13th bill.  Let’s see how it turns out.

Axelrod Astroturfing Hughes House Plants?

Color me skeptical:

We all know David Axelrod, Puppet President Black Obama’s ventriloquist, knows how to plant Astroturf to create the illusion of grassroots support where there is none, as well as he knows how to cover it with bullshit to make it appear to grow.  Could he have had a hand in the “Obie Does Oprah Queen for a Day Goes to Florida” heart tugging, tear jerking, shmaltz-a-thon we saw earlier this week?

Does a bear shit anywhere it wants to?

On Tuesday, February 10, the Obamessiah took his “Greatest Hits of the Stimulus Package” show on the road to Fort Myers, Florida, after a brief stop in Elkhart, Indiana the day before, where he pledged to get those good folks back to work building gas-guzzling recreational vehicles nobody can afford just as soon as those sticklers for fiscal responsibility on both sides of the aisle in Washington get tired enough of having their arms twisted and get used to the wool over their eyes enough to help him bamboozle the Republic in peace, or at least be quiet about it.  In Florida, the Spokesmodel in Chief tried out his Monty Monte game show host chops, encouraging people to “come on down” and share their pain for a shot at the big wheel.  Going “boy, girl, boy, girl” through the handpicked crowd of pre-screened contestants (bypassing the too obviously delusional love-struck looneys, one of whom was unfortunately caught on camera during the scripted, pain-sharing portion) Obamboozle finally alighted upon a “young lady” who’d been patiently trying to get his attention like, for-ev-er, almost as long as the hyped up enthusiastic meth-head McDonald’s worker “boy” chosen after her.  The time, 12:57 Eastern.

In a stroke of happenstance too coincidental to be a coincidence, approximately 45 minutes later, Henrietta Hughes Had a Website, soon to be two, on her way to a total of five.*  Not long thereafter Henrietta Had a Home.

It seems Henrietta has had other homes, in fact, there are those who say she still has a home in her 37 year old unemployed son Corey’s name.  Due to a thyroid condition (Corey) and bouts with breast cancer, (Henrietta) the college educated mother and son have been unable to work, or afford $400 a month housing, being instead forced to live in their pick-up truck without a backseat, that no one has as yet seen and photographed.

Could this all be true?  Sure, this is America, at a time when we face huge economic pitfalls as a nation that threaten to put us all in a communal poorhouse unless a strong leader with a steady hand takes the reins and leads us confidently and competently to financial security.

We’re doomed!  Head for the hills! Run for your lives! Help! Help! Help!

(slapping self with cold water)

However, given what we know about the sneaky, underhanded way Axelrod and his ASK Public Strategies is paid to operate, the complete lack of scruples exhibited repeatedly by Team Obama, and the by now predictable modus operandi of the meticulously produced and stage-managed Obamadini Traveling Light and Magic Show, Henrietta Hughes is most likely a potted Astroturf plant.

And, for those who say, “poor woman, she has problems, how can you doubt her story?” I say, shut up, wake up, and stop being a KoolAid drinking, self-blindfolded, delusionazoid.  Henrietta Hughes and her son could very well be just as bad off as they claim to be, or they could be system-gaming petty crooks, and still be tools of the Obamachine.  You can exploit the truth just as easily as you can exploit a lie.  The point is not, is her story true, the question is, how’d she just happen to find a way to the front of the line to tell it?

Where was her son?

Where was the truck?

Where’d she get the dress, and where’d she shower, do her hair and makeup and put it on?

It’s really nice that the spirit of bipartisan, post-racial American charity is so strong that a white Republican woman can give a home to black, presumably Democratic woman who couldn’t vote because her car doesn’t have an address, even though her son does, just because that black woman had the pluck and grit to stand in line for a chance to ask the President of the United States for help.

It’s nice, but I ain’t buyin’ it.

*The link in the Canada Free Press article to Henrietta Hughes.org links to Hemrietta Hughes.com, even if you type it into the address line yourself.  Which could mean that there are only a total of four Henrietta Hughes websites, but it would still be curious.  Also, the CFP piece does not list the other 3 sites by name, but does provide owner info at the end.

Maybe We Should Help Obama Out

Okay, we didn’t want the guy who’s president to be president; I get that, right there with you, uh huh, sure you’re right.  In fact, if I may be so bold, I really, really, really didn’t want him to be president, under any imaginable, foreseeable, or unforeseeable circumstances possible, probable or remotely predictable or conceivable.  To be even more clear, if either Gary Coleman or Bussey were running with Joaquin Phoenix and/or Chris Brown, or Ronald McDonald or Mrs. Butterworth teamed up with big-headed Jack in the Box Jack, or the Taco Bell dog or the Geico gecko, I would have voted for any pair of them in an accelerated heartbeat.  Chewing used collagen from Lara Flynn Boyle’s or Lisa Rinna’s over-puffed lips like Juicy Fruit would have been a fiesta of heretofore unfathomable orgasmic delight in comparison to having Barack Obama set foot in the White House on a Grey Line tour, in my humble opinion.

But, alas, he is president, and seems to be floundering in waters so far above his head he would have to climb the equivalent of the Sears Tower erected atop an erupting Mount St. Helens to see anything approximating daylight.  Therefore, I’d like to suggest that maybe we PUMAs should help him out.  Organizing for America and White House.gov are there for everybody, right?  Why can’t we put these thoughtfully provided resources to good use?

We couldn’t possibly come up with any worse ideas than the ones the Obuhbuh administration has put forward so far, could we?  I mean, we could each throw back a quart of heroin-laced Jack, chased with Rohypnol ‘n Coke and still put forth a more comprehensive agenda.  Even in our drug- and alcohol-induced stupor, I’m sure any PUMA could have predicted that some sort of plan would be necessary to address the nation’s economic crisis on Day One and put at least a couple of our four or five hundred economic advisors to work on one during our rock star tour transition period.  Hell, it’s not like we would have been busy vetting the cabinet appointees whose names we picked out of a hat, or anything.

The more I think about it, the better I like the idea.  Even though we would have to keep our suggestions simple and not use too many big words, I’m sure we could provide an invaluable service to our country before the handbasket makes it all the way to hell.  If you agree that we should all do our part to try to right this sinking ship, feel free to share your ideas here first.  As a front united in patriotism and civic duty, I’m sure we can move this molehill of a mountain that is the nascent administration of the Not Ready For Primetime Neophyte to dizzying heights.

Or, we could just make fun of him until 2012.

Up to you.

At Least He’s Still Black

What’s up with the Most Transformational Super Fantastic Bombastic Charismatic Political Figure Who Happened To Be Black And Blessed, that he can’t pick a cabinet for shit?  According to Fox News, Commerce Secretary appointee, Judd Gregg has officially said, “bump this noise, I can’t hang,” only not exactly in those words:

Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire has withdrawn his nomination to become President Obama’s commerce secretary.

In a statement released by his office, the New Hampshire senator cites “irresolvable conflicts” on issues including the economic stimulus package.

Gregg was named the Commerce nominee a week ago after the withdrawal of former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

So while Oboyi’mboss trots around the country today being just black enough, killing two racial birds with one stone by celebrating Lincoln’s birthday, which conveniently falls during Black History Month so he doesn’t actually have to mention it, in the “symbolism over substance” manner of the 16th President, his much touted “superior judgment” is proving to be equally insubstantial.  His scandal plagued Treasury Secretary, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat,  (TTTG,tc) has shown himself to be not only not the only guy on the planet capable of leading us out of the wilderness of our economic crisis, but excruciatingly boring as well.

Obuyme’s first Secretary of Commerce choice, Bill (Judas) Richardson, is another big ol’ heap o’ trouble waiting to fully develop like a Polaroid picture, according to Politico:

A grand jury in New Mexico is currently investigating whether the financial services company CDR funneled more than $100,000 in campaign contributions to Richardson’s PAC in order to win state bond and construction finance projects. Several other financial firms and banks, including UBS, are also accused of contributing to the PAC in order to gain contracts.

Richardson’s office has been subpoenaed to hand over correspondence with the Democratic Governors’ Association, which received contributions from UBS during Richardson’s time as DGA chairman that alone total more than $400,000.

And the governor’s former chief of staff was recently identified in another alleged pay-to-play scheme; the allegations are that a Chicago investment firm was awarded a contract to handle the state’s pension fund because it contributed $15,000 to Richardson’s PAC. The fund lost $90 million under the company’s watch.

In addition, Richardson has come under criticism for awarding state contracts to political allies. Local news outlets have chronicled how one local firm stacked with Richardson allies has been awarded $7.8 million in state auditing contracts since he became governor. In the five years prior to his 2002 election, the firm received $274,000 in such contracts, according to the New Mexico Independent.

I guess when you can get your party’s high-ranking officials to tout your controversial, not-quite-done, historic victory of a “stimulus bill” as “transformational,” you don’t have to sweat a withdrawal from a guy who seemed like such a good idea when he “campaigned for the job,” only to back out when he realized he doesn’t like you much.  What’s one more setback when you’re the first black President of Hope and Change?

I mean really, could we, as a people, really afford to wait and pray for a good one?

At least one of his appointees seems to be working out.

Obama Can Kick Luke Skywalker’s Ass

Oh, de power ub de KoolAid.  Should be an H. T. Burleigh arranged, “Nobody Knows“-type, old Negro spiritual by now, in honor of Black History Month:

Oh, de power ub de KoolAid

Lawd, it make me strong

Wit’ de KoolAid, I knows I always be right

Eben when I be knowin’ I be wrong

No kidding, that’s next.  Digging up an urban African burial ground and finding 150 year old texts written by slaves freed by Lincoln that honor the Magical Mystical Messiah is the only thing left.  When a guy who’s never done much of anything but get hired as Spokesmodel In Chief to sell other people’s ideas to the gullible can be compared to everybody from Martin Fitzgerald Abraham Reagan to Jesus Christ, Superman, it’s time to take stock of our location in this alternate reality universe.

According to Politico, George Lucas, master, and obviously, denizen, if not mayor, of all universes alternate, has offered the latest peculiar paean to preposterousness; Barack Obama can kick Luke Skywalker’s ass, even sans lightsaber.

We all know that Barack Obama has achieved superstar status. But is he an actual hero? Like in the action movie sense?

You betcha! says “Star Wars” creator George Lucas, who was in Washington Wednesday night for the Ford’s Theatre reopening celebration where both he and screen legend Sidney Poitier were being honored with the Ford Theatre Society’s Lincoln medal in a ceremony attended by President Barack Obama, a Lincoln aficionado.

Lucas says that, in a contest between Luke Skywalker and Obama, our 44th president wins hands down—even without the lightsaber. In addition, Poitier told Politico that Obama’s rockstar status is still going strong.

At least in the Spiderman hook-up, they had the decency to have the superhero save the president, not the other way around.  But, like I said, when “ardent feminists” can fantasize so wetly about the Mandingo as Superman image that they abandon their principles to project it onto the masses, and celebrated filmmakers can assert that time will be measured differently when The One Louis Farrakhan calls the Messiah ascends to his rightful place above us all, and still be taken seriously in some circles, we really need a national reality check.

Blago’s Baaaa-aaack

Rod Blagojevich, the unemployed former Illinois governor; is not exactly going quietly into that good night. I guess if you’re the guy who the United States Congress blackmailed the Illinois Senate into voting 59-0 to remove from office, or get zero stimulus bill dollars, you carry a grudge.  From CNN:

The $825 billion stimulus bill the Obama administration is trying to push through Congress would prevent any money given to the state of Illinois from being handled by the state’s impeached governor, Rod Blagojevich.

The 647-page bill bars Illinois agencies from receiving any money unless the Legislature directs how it will be spent, or until “Rod R. Blagojevich no longer holds the office of governor of the state of Illinois.” It does allow local governments to receive money directly from Washington or through the state, if state agencies follow an established formula.

With nothing to lose, Blago’s all in.  Politico reports that on a WLS-AM (the article says WSL, but this site of Chicago area radio stations shows no such call letters, while WLS is locally famous for talk radio) Blago was still swinging for the fences.  According to Blags, not only is the state full of crooks, they’re a bunch of  bungling, drunken philanderers on the taxpayers’ dime, too:

“This is how the system in Springfield works,” Blagojevich explained during an interview with the Chicago-area radio station WSL-AM. “A bunch of these lawmakers go down to Springfield, nobody even knows who they are, they’re away from their families. It’s a whole different world down there, a bunch of them are cheating on their spouses, a lot of them drink in excess, very few of them know what’s going on.”

While no names are given, Hot Rod does give an example of a wayward lovesick “lawmaker” with enough description provided to ensure that everybody on Blago’s old stomping grounds will either know exactly who he is, or think he’s talking about them:

“The wife found out and she wanted that secretary fired,” he said. “But this guy was in love with his secretary, so he goes to the legislative leader, they come to us, they want us to hire this woman so that we can keep that guy happy and, you know, then hope that they might work with us on some issues.”

Blagojevich also said they do the same stuff in Washington, too:

“It’s not just state government. I saw that as a congressman in Washington,” he said. “It’s part of the human dynamic and I don’t want to be too judgmental, but these same guys get up and they get holier-than-thou on their soapboxes and there they are doing that sort of thing, promoting that kind of thing.

“Yeah, people are human and they make mistakes, but cheating on your wife and sleeping with your secretary, that’s the wrong thing to do.”

It should be noted that fooling around on his wife is the one thing Blago hasn’t been accused of.

Yet.

But, if he keeps giving interviews like this, you can bet it’s coming.

Working Across The Aisle Is Overrated

Congress might be close to getting the new President Black Obama’s stimulus bill passed, but, it seems to me that under his leadership, they’ve gone about it the wrong way from the beginning with all this “reaching across the aisle” stuff.

My idea of good government does not include a single scenario of tuxedo clad dapper dudes courting designer draped twittering dames nibbling toothpicked cocktail wienies and other chi-chi-chic retro snacks over fru-fru umbrella drinks while their tinkling laughter competes with the tinkling strains of Muzaked versions of K-Tell’s Greatest Hits of Aging Rock Stars and Hair Bands until such time as all the Pretty People have filled out the thoughtfully provided Amway/Avon/Tupperware/Mary Kay/Girl Scout Cookie/High School Marching Band chocolate bar order sheets holding hands and humming “Kumbayah” on the way out.

If some sleazy snake oil salesman steps over my side of the line and tries to take my stuff, I want knock-down, drag-out, bare-knuckled, clenched fist, hair pulling, teeth bared, all-or-nothing fights to the finish over every nickle, dime and penny of taxpayer money anybody even thinks about spending for any reason.   And it doesn’t matter if said transgressor has a D, R, XYZ or symbol of the Artist Formerly Known as Prince after his or her name, get the hell back where you belong and maybe we can talk bout it.

Every time I hear some pencil pushing politician spout the new UniParty line, “the people want us to work together,” I wanna scream and punch a hole in my TV or computer screen.  “No we don’t, you shit, we want you to stick to your principles while you negotiate the best deal possible, not ask politely for crumbs only to slink back to your assigned seat on your side of the aisle and pout about how the other guys won’t play along.  And, if they don’t have enough players to mount a good defense, screw ‘em.  They knew the rules when they decided to play the game.  You don’t allow them to change them on every play in the interest of leveling the playing field without giving them an unfair advantage.

Barack Obama looks wishy-washy in his first few weeks as President because he always seems to use exactly the wrong tactics at precisely the wrong time.  Remember, bribing the superdelegates refs and getting the commission to apply “da roolz” to their advantage (RBC) worked for the Obama Boyz in the primaries and fudging them worked in the general election (public financing), but sooner or later, they’re going to have to learn that rivalries, groundrules and traditions exist for a reason.

You can’t have it both ways, Barack.  What was the point of all the sneaky, underhanded stunts you pulled against your own teammates to get the quarterback job, if all you’re gonna do is politely hand the ball over to the other team on every play and ask them nicely to help you carry it across the line?  And, why would you be surprised and start screaming, “foul!” when they turn around and run the other way?  You don’t break into their huddle to taunt them and then whine like a baby when they gang up on you and try to kick your ass.  Either stacking the deck in your favor by any means necessary is the way to get things done, or it isn’t.  And, if it’s not, you should forfeit.   Because that’s how you got the job you seem so hellbent on tanking now.

Democrats and Republicans working together to screw their constituents might work for the Illinois Combine, but in the big leagues, the only reason to work for a majority is to steamroll the other side into submission.

Seems to me a guy with an astronomical approval rating and a clear-cut agenda, who called the situation “dire” from the gate, could have breezed any deal he wanted through in record time, with a lot more than the 3 Republican votes he’s managed to rack up so far, if he had ditched the “bipartisan” trap.

And, if the “old Republican ways of the last eight years that got us into this mess” are so wrong, why do you want them in the deal, anyway?

It’s a 2-party system, Barack.

Act like a Democrat for once in your life.

Congress Knows Best

A slew of America’s toniest Captains of Capitalism were hauled onto the House of Representatives’ carpet to justify to their bailout benefactors, Big Daddy Ourbucks, why they took taxpayer money just because the government told them to, and exactly what they thought they were doing  with it.  On the whole, they took their hand slapping like big boys, though.  Here’s the CliffsNotes version:

Congress:  You’ve been bad!

Bankers: We’ll be good.

Congress: The whole family’s mad at you!

Bankers:  We’re sorry?

Congress: What will people think?

Bankers: We’re really, really sorry?

Congress: Don’t let it happen again!

Bankers: Okay.

Congress: Alright, then, go play.

That’s pretty much what happened.  Here’s how the Associated Press reported it:

Facing a disgusted public and Congress, bank CEOs agreed with demands for greater accountability Wednesday in the first testimony on how they’re spending money from the taxpayer-funded $700 billion bailout.

“Both our firm and our industry have far to go to regain the trust of taxpayers, investors and public officials,” John J. Mack, head of Morgan Stanley, told the House Financial Institutions Committee.

Added JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon: “We stand ready to do our part going forward.”

Mommy and Daddy Good Government conveniently forgot to mention they bought the little darlings the hot rod they went joyriding in, though:

Most of these bankers didn’t beg for their money. They were selected because they were relative healthy banks that could spur more banking activity and eliminate the stigma of taking taxpayer money for other financial institutions.

I guess next time Father Knows Best will make sure there’s a GPS system on the dashboard:

Obama Tuesday accused Wall Street of seeking an “easy” way out of the mire and promised more “tough love,” after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner outlined a new bank bailout potentially worth up to two trillion dollars.

Lawmakers’ approval will be required to release new taxpayer funds for Wall Street. And that could be a tough sell, with Congress already doing battle over a stimulus package worth upwards of 800 billion dollars.

Maybe the next kids will have to settle for a bike.

The Mother Of All Tin Foil Theories

Big, Honking Disclaimer: The views expressed in the following post do not, repeat, do not reflect the opinions of Yours Truly, except for the snarky ones that regular readers will easily identify.  Okay?   We straight on that?  Alrightythen.

Okay, so, I’m surfin’ the ‘net…doo dooo doo doooooo…anyway, I’m surfin’ along, minding my own business, and I literally stumble (as much as you can stumble in cyberspace) across this really wierd article.  (insert dream-like flashback effect here)  It all started on Buzz Tracker, then lead to Wonkette (yeah, yeah) who linked to World Net Daily.  Now, I know I should never have clicked the links that lead me to the story I’m about to share with the HUGE caveat, read at your own risk.  Donning your favorite tin foil hat, maybe two, is probably a good idea.  In fact, I recommend wrapping yourself and your computer in tinfoil before continuing.  I’ll wait.

Dum de dum dee dooody dummmmm…

Ready?

Here goes.

Some woman in Russia supposedly claimed in 1992 the The One was being groomed by the communists to become president of the United States in the then near future.  WND claims to have sat on the story since last year, due to the tin foil aspects of the allegations.  Too tinfoily for WND?   Hello?  Anyway, you decide.  The gist is, the author, Janet Porter, supposedly got an email “last fall” from a Southern Baptist muckety-muck named Dr. Wiley Drake, who says he met a guy named Tom Fife, a government contractor with the Department of Defense, who had this story to tell:

The first time I heard of Barack

During the period of roughly February 1992 to mid-1994, I was making frequent trips to Moscow, Russia, in the process of starting a software development joint-venture company with some people from the Russian scientific community. One of the men in charge on the Russian side was named V. M.; he had a wife named T.M.

V. was a level-headed scientist, while his wife was rather deeply committed to the losing Communist cause – a cause she obviously was not abandoning.

One evening, during a trip early in 1992, the American half of our venture were invited to V. & T.’s Moscow flat as we were about to return to the States. The party went well and we had the normal dinner discussions.

As the evening wore on, T. developed a decidedly rough anti-American edge – one her husband tried to quietly rein in.

The bottom line of the tirade she started against the United States went something like this:

“You Americans always like to think that you have the perfect government and your people are always so perfect. Well then, why haven’t you had a woman president by now? You had a chance to vote for a woman vice president and you didn’t do it.”

The general response went something along the lines that you don’t vote for someone just because of their sex. Besides, you don’t vote for vice president, but the president and vice president as a ticket.

“Well, I think you are going to be surprised when you get a black president very soon.”

The consensus we expressed was that we didn’t think there was anything innately barring that. The right person at the right time and sure, America would try to vote for the right person, be he or she, black or not.

“What if I told you that you will have a black president very soon and he will be a Communist?”

The out-of-the-blue remark was met by our stares. She continued, “Well, you will; and he will be a Communist.”

It was then that the husband unsuccessfully tried to change the subject; but she was on a roll and would have nothing of it. One of us asked, “It sounds like you know something we don’t know.”

“Yes, it is true. This is not some idle talk. He is already born, and he is educated and being groomed to be president right now. You will be impressed to know that he has gone to the best schools of presidents. He is what you call ‘Ivy League.’ You don’t believe me, but he is real and I even know his name. His name is Barack. His mother is white and American and his father is black from Africa. That’s right, a chocolate baby! And he’s going to be your president.”

She became more and more smug as she presented her stream of detailed knowledge and predictions so matter-of-factly – as though all were foregone conclusions. “It’s all been thought out. His father is not an American black, so he won’t have that social slave stigma. He is intelligent and he is half white and has been raised from the cradle to be an atheist and a Communist. He’s gone to the finest schools. He is being guided every step of the way and he will be irresistible to America.”

We sat there not knowing what to say. She was obviously very happy that the Communists were doing this and that it would somehow be a thumbing of their collective noses at America: They would give us a black president and he’d be a Communist to boot. She made it quite obvious that she thought that this was going to breathe new life into world Communism. From this and other conversations with her, she always asserted that Communism was far from dead.

She was full of little details about him that she was eager to relate. I thought that maybe she was trying to show off that this truly was a real person and not just hot air.

She rattled off a complete litany. He was from Hawaii. He went to school in California. He lived in Chicago. He was soon to be elected to the Legislature. “Have no doubt: he is one of us, a Soviet.”

At one point, she related some sort of San Francisco connection, but I didn’t understand what the point was and don’t recall much about that. I was just left with the notion that she considered the city to be some sort of a center for their activity here.

Since I had dabbled in languages, I knew a smattering of Arabic. I made a comment: “If I remember correctly, ‘Barack’ comes from the Arabic word for ‘Blessing.’ That seems to be an odd name for an American.” She replied quickly, “Yes. It is ‘African,’” she insisted, “and he will be a blessing for world Communism. We will regain our strength and become the number one power in the world.”

She continued with something to the effect that America was at the same time the great hope and the great obstacle for Communism. America would have to be converted to Communism, and Barack was going to pave the way.

So, what does this conversation from 1992 prove?

Well, it’s definitely anecdotal. It doesn’t prove that Obama has had Soviet Communist training nor that he was groomed to be the first black American president, but it does show one thing that I think is very important. It shows that Soviet Russian Communists knew of Barack from a very early date. It also shows that they truly believed among themselves that he was raised and groomed Communist to pave the way for their future. This report on Barack came personally to me from one of them long before America knew he existed.

Although I had never before heard of him, at the time of this conversation Obama was 30-plus years old and was obviously tested enough that he was their anticipated rising star.

Okay, there it is.  Toldja it was the mother of tinfoil hat theories.  Now, I’ve done my duty, and I suggest you get out of all that foil before you head off to the microwave for popcorn.  And, while you’re at it, get a Coke, not Pepsi, too.  A snarking good tale like this one deserves snacks.

Tom Fife can be reached here: thefife@hotmail.com

Move To Florida, Get An Obama House

People laughed and scoffed at Sunshine, Florida’s Peggy Joseph when she said the election of Barack Obama as president meant that she wouldn’t have to worry about her mortgage anymore:

Well, who’s laughing now?  Not Fort Myers, Florida’s Henrietta Hughes:

Who said half a vote wouldn’t count for anything?

Introducing Geithner

Geithner Plan = Paulson Plan, Part II

Turbo Tax Timothy Geithner, tax cheat, or “TTTG,tc,” made his television debut today in his much anticipated spin-off of America’s newest reality show hit, “Meet Mr. President,” because, goodness knows, we just can’t get enough of being re-introduced to our nascent Spokesmodel-In-Chief whenever he wants to change personas to match situational focus group expectations.  Anyway, TTTG,tc’s inaugural episode borrowed classically familiar techniques from his minion boss’ playbook: TelePrompTer-read prepared remarks, though Sahara Desert dryly delivered, were rendered strangely compelling, in a traffic accident lookyloo, or D-level foreign horror movie kind of way, by the fascinating Vulcan-esque shape of his ears, in much the same way his tool superior’s Jerry Mouse-like auricles are.

TTTG,tc’s proposal can best be characterized as either the Obama administration-sanctioned revision of the Paulson Plan, TARP, first proposed early last year, and passed into law in the wake of the Sept. 15, electronic bank run, to divvy up the nation’s finances between a handful of national banks, or, the next phase of the Bilderberg Group/Tri-lateral Commission’s grand scheme to take over the world through the establishment of 5 or 6 global corporate nations, (Sino-Russica, North Americana, European Union, etc.) depending on the size, shape, quality and fit of your tinfoil hat.

The most intriguing aspect of TTTG,tc’s contribution to establishing America’s big baller status at the table of global domination through the bankrupting of it’s economy, is his “three-legged stool” approach.  Basically, the government, in conjunction with the private sector, will agree to take the troubled assets part (now called “toxic”) of TARP off the hands of the banksters reluctant to sell them at the fire-sale prices they’re now worth, choosing instead to blackmail the government with them by threatening to withhold funds from everybody until they get what they paid for them, plus interest.  Think, trying to get the money to buy your girlfriend an engagement ring by sellinng your crappy 1976 aubergine Pinto on EBay for the 4,000 dollars you overpaid for it, plus 5,000 dollars just for the hell of it, then getting pissed when the only offer you get is to have it hauled away at cost.  Under the Geithner Plan, the government would pay you the 9 grand, with the assistance of a legitimate buyer who would contribute the 50 dollar Blue Book value, then, turn around and sell it to a sucker who thinks he’s getting a bargain, for 500.  Somehow, this will encourage somebody else to take out a new car loan with the banker who bought your Pinto’s paper for fifty bucks, or the one who used to have it who bought it from the bank you originally financed with, either of which will now be only too happy to grant them one.  If they don’t, the government will.  Then, you could buy your girl the ring, or say screw that and loan somebody else all or part of the nine grand, or, keep it all for yourself.

Anyway, not being a financial expert, (hell, I get pissed when the mechanical lady at the Wal-Mart self-checkout gives me grief for not putting the money in right) that’s what I got out of TTTG,tc’s throat-searingly dry presentation.  I’m not the only one who either doesn’t really get it, or thinks it’s a butt-scratchingly stupid idea, because stocks are a-tumbling like dominoes in the wake of the “Banking with Timmy” show.  I guess some people just don’t like the idea of a guy who helped engineer the crisis he’s now pretending to try to fix, ballsily promoting a plan to further rape and pillage the masses.  Go figure.

Since the mega Wall Street players got their taxpayer money free in the first half of the Paulson Plan, and have already split it up amongst themselves and are using it to buy stuff in and hire people from foreign countries, they should be cool.  The rest of the chump bankers will have to jump through hoops to get their cut, but not too many, TTTG,tc is a bankster himself after all, so he cut them some slack.  And, while they don’t get the sweeeet deal the major players did, they’ll make out like bandits anyway.

The rest of the country is seriously screwed all the way around though, but when you put a tax cheating, former head of the New York Fed in charge of the FREAKING TREASURY, to handle a financial crisis aided and abetted by the Fed, that’s what you should expect.   Doesn’t much matter, though, it’s all theater, anyway.

Knock It Off, ‘Bots

After last night’s “rah-rah the country sucks” (sung to the tune of Obamaniac favorite, Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead) Cheerleader-In-Chief press conference, where we, as a nation, were told that “the economy stinks so bad we have to do something, so I’m telling you that Congress should hurry up and pass this bill we’re not sure is gonna work, but at least it’s something, just to piss you off, because, after all, you can’t vote on it,” a predictable pattern emerged, familiar to all those not hooked on hopium.  The ‘Bots came out.  At least, they tried to.

This always happens after the Crybaby Commander does something to piss off the part of the country that never gets polled.  First, he whines about “distractions,” then his Astroturfing ground crew finds somebody else to blame in lieu of, or in addition to, a media and Big Boy Blogger Bullies fueled “distraction” of their own, then, the blogger ‘Bots stick their toes in the “see, it’s not his fault water” of NoBamaLand.

Next, the Perpetual Campaigner takes his act on the road for a tryout before opening on television to certain rave media and Blogger Bully reviews, regardless of actual performance quality, which is always less than advertised.  Finally, the blogger ‘Bot bees are deployed to infest the domains of those critical, looking for fights by singing their Fearless Leader’s praises where they’re sure to be unappreciated.  Those of us on both sides of the aisle, with the clear vision afforded anyone free of stars in their eyes, are used to the harassment you could set your watch by, and are sick of it.

Therefore, I’m making a request on behalf of all NoBamaLand, be it the PUMAsphere or the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: knock it off, ‘Bots.  Both of you.  Nobody’s listening, there aren’t very many of you left, and besides, wouldn’t your time be better spent stroking your own kind, if you can still find any?  They’re the ones so quickly becoming disillusioned that you can’t fill a decent propaganda campaign rally with them on short notice anymore; instead, being forced to open the rally gates to actual dissenters looking for real answers rather than your fellating fellow Obots swooning giddily over sound bites and photo-ops.  You guys can’t even marshal enough forces to make it look like your “house parties for change” represent a groundswell of support for your guy anymore.

And, really, haven’t you figured out by now that your pitiful “ain’t he great? Didn’t he read that TelePrompTer so well you could just die?  Aren’t your Obapanites wet?” schtick all over other people’s blogs is mainly programmed to go straight to the spam filter?  Only those sites paid for traffic still tolerate you, and that’s only because you make them money.  Nobody really pays any attention to you, though.  You never were scary, even when you ranted and raved so much a person could feel the spittle of the deranged flying out of your mouths onto their cheeks through cyberspace, now, you’d have to work really hard to even be mildly annoying.  Frankly, we’re all pretty tired of saying, “I told you so, you bore me, go to hell.”

The latest tact, “you better get on the unity unicorn now, or it’s going to be a long four years” is the stupidest deployment of the Rainbow Pony Ploy, yet.  It’s going to be a long four years, anyway, but it’s not going to be nearly as painful for us as it is for you.  We’ve always  known the crash and burn was coming; you not only keep pretending it’s not, you persist in acting like you really think the sun will come out tomorrow like Annie on acid.  But, this time, we know you know better.  Your numbers are already dwindling, your grumbling is getting louder, and your breaking little ‘Bot hearts are no longer really in it.

Sorry to break it down even further to you like this, but, ain’t no sunshine, rainbows or ponies in our collective future.  Things really are as bleak as they seem, and, as we’ve all told you a million times a day, every day for the last two years, your guy’s not going to be any more ready on Day 100, than he was on Day One.  So, leave us alone, or we won’t share our popcorn with you when you finally fully wake up.

Ohhhhh, NOW It Makes Sense!

Now that I’ve watched the latest edition of the new series,  “Dreams of My President: Live! On Location,” I have a much better understanding of his vision as it relates to remedying the nation’s ailing economy.  If I understand correctly, he wants to pump money into devastated communities like, Elkhart, Indiana, so they can get back to work making RV’s that violate his “green energy” standards unless they retool plants and make them more expensive with better batteries since nobody can afford to buy them now, anyway. If they build them, stingy banks will suddenly start loaning money to broke people so they can spend it on vacation vehicles.  That oughta fix everything.

Otherwise, we’re fucked.

Oh, and he wants the “bipartisan” participation of the guys who screwed everything up in the first place with their wrong ideology, and then left the putrid mess on his otherwise pristine desk to clean up on arrival.  (We’ll conveniently forget how he lobbied, twice, and voted for the Wall Street pay-off disguised as TARP as a Senator on the campaign trail.  Being a perpetually campaigning President is much harder and deserves some slack.)

I think that about covers it.

So, I don’t know bout you, but I was certainly reassured as I watched the Spokesmodel-in-Chief read familiar phrases from his TelePrompTer-To-Go that the rest of us know by heart before he opened the floor to pre-screened questions from previously selected suck-ups sympathetic patriotic hacks journalists reporters dedicated to bringing us the Astroturfed spin unvarnished truth, that I can now sleep peacefully, content in the knowledge that, with the young Ronald Reagan aging Urkel Haskell Obamessiah at the helm, the country is screwed nine ways to Sunday in AllState-like good hands.

ObaGlow Fades To Black

I was a registered Democrat for my entire voting life, when I could be bothered to register or vote, because I was expected to be.  As a child growing up in Chicago, watching events unfold every day at dinner time on one of three available channels on our big console TV with the little screen, that led to Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act  when I was ten years old, my parents sang the praises of the Democratic Party because the Democrats “cared about the black man.”  That they didn’t mention black women didn’t bother me in the least, nobody important ever mentioned women of any color; even Martin Luther King spoke of “black men and white men…,” even though I would bet he probably saw women as equal as anybody else at the time did whenever he thought about it, which was probably not very often.  Long before I was ten, I was well aware that being a girl pretty much sucked.

However, being a Democrat was good, being black was getting better.  Therefore, being a black Democrat was a no-brainer.  And, like most people, I never gave it a conscious thought.  I guess if I had to examine my assumptions, they’d go something like this; Democrats are good, Republicans suck.  Democrats care about black men, so that means all black people, me included.  Republicans must not care about black people, or, they’d be Democrats, so, they’re evil.  Nobody cares about women, why worry about it?

But, to take it a step further, Democrats being the party of caring about black people meant even more than that.  It meant they were the fair party, since the only reason for white people to help black people could only be that they saw that it wasn’t fair not to.  So, if the Democrats were the fair party, and, they talked about the “little guy,” that meant they wanted to be fair to everybody, right?  And, when “women’s issues,” including vaginal freshness and brassiere wearing, finally got the attention of the “male chauvinist pigs” who ran the country, reason had it that those MCP’s had to be Republicans, since discrimination against women just isn’t fair.  Democrats were fair champions of the little guy, including blacks and women; Republicans – evil white people.  Worked for me.

As I got older, and in many ways, no wiser, in others, more responsible, and began to take my civic duties a little more seriously, I held fast to my long ago learned beliefs.  I was a Democrat because they are fair.  Jesse Jackson could even run for president as a Democrat.  Clarence Thomas being appointed to the Supreme Court was different, as a Republican, he was obviously confused about loyalty to racial solidarity, having taken sides with the evil white people, and, therefore, forfeited his blackness.  Geraldine Ferraro was on the ticket with Mondale because Democrats were fair to women now, too; Condoleeza Rice was a Clarence Thomas clone in drag.

Needless to say, for many years, I wasn’t really paying attention, but that was okay, I was a Democrat, and, if not on the side of the angels, at least on the side of the Trinity, Kennedy, King, Kennedy.  As a black American Democrat, that was all that was required, since black people were never really involved in the process, anyway.  We were expected to vote because people died for our right to vote, not because anybody expected anything to be significantly affected by our vote; everybody knew that who we voted for, or if we voted at all, made no difference whatsoever in the grand scheme of things.

I began to pay attention somewhat during the Clinton administration; I liked him, he was a Democrat, and he was cute.  I got mad when people picked on him, and I was happy when they didn’t prevail.  Other than the fact that I thought the evil white Republicans picking on Bill and Hillary Clinton wasn’t fair, that’s pretty much the extent of my awareness of the Clinton years.    It wasn’t until the 2000 election that I really began to take note of presidential politics, though, even then, I brought my prejudices right along with me.  Al Gore should have won, that was the only fair outcome, besides, he was Bill Clinton’s veep and, a beauty contest between him and George Bush was pretty much a toss-up.  Remember though, Gore got a couple extra Prince Charming points, being a Democrat and all, while Bush got docked a few for being an evil white Republican toad.

Needless to say, my prejudices were validated by the outcome of the 2000 election, and again in 2004.  There seemed to be way too many evil white Republicans taking over my country, and  that just wasn’t fair.  So, in 2008, I was determined to sit up and take notice, get involved, keep track.  In the ‘04 election I had signed up on John Kerry’s mailing list, and got regular emails alerting me to things he thought I should know about, most of them involving money moving the wrong way, i.e., from me to him, not from him, or the government, sending something my way.  I ignored those.  Then, he sent me a gushing email about Barack Obama, the kid he had invited to speak at the Democratic National Convention, to such glowing reviews you needed RayBans to read them.  I didn’t get what the fuss was all about, either at Kerry’s convention, or at any other time.  What I knew about Obama was, white people were impressed because he could read a DNC form-letter of a speech, and he was the guy who got elected into the Senate because everybody else in Illinois was a sex-crazed crook.  Once I saw that the evil white Republicans had to scramble  to find another Clarence Thomas wannabe in Alan Keyes to import at the last minute to try to give the done deal at least the vaguest appearance of a contest, I knew enough about con games to be suspicious.   So, when Obama threw his hat in the presidential ring, I was more than a bit underwhelmed.  Besides, I liked Hillary Clinton.

After all, she was married to Bill, wasn’t she?  Wasn’t she always the brains behind the throne?  The fact that she stayed with him after the big nobody’s business scandal around her marriage didn’t matter one way or the other to me, that she loved him enough to make him get the heart surgery he needed did.  Beyond that, she had run for the Senate, won, and seemed to be making a pretty decent name for herself.  And, she was committed to Universal Health Care.  I liked that.

So, I emailed John Kerry back and demanded he remove my name from his mailing list, and started to really pay attention to the primaries.  As I watched the candidates duke it out in debate after debate, Hillary seemed to grow in my opinion, while everybody else, especially Barack, seemed to shrink like a guy’s Speedo package on a cold day at the beach. (I can do sexist, too.)  No matter what kind of “gotcha” question she was asked, Clinton always had an answer that she seemed to think about before delivering, while the Keystone Kops running against her seemed to just repeat stump speech lines from memory, whether they were really applicable or not.  Except Obama, who usually said, “me, too, what Hillary said,” before he launched into his standard, “hope to change the old ways” schtick.

Then, the games began.  The guys ganged up on her in Iowa, pledging to throw their “second tier” support to Obama for some strange reason.  But it was the emerging “she’s a racist, she can’t help herself, it’s ingrained in white people and her husband is from the South, you know,” not-so-subtle race-baiting campaign Obama was running that really made me hate him.  “I’m black, they’re not, so vote for me because that’s what being a Democrat is all about,” might as well have been printed up as a campaign sticker as obvious as the ploy was.  But, knowing what I knew about being a black Democrat, there was no doubt in my mind such a ploy would be successful, though, I did hold out hope that the underlying bedrock principle of Democratic fairness would ultimately prevail.

No such luck.  As I watched  the party manipulate and maneuver, I realized for the first time just how shallow the principles I thought I believed in were and how hollowly they were held by my party.  They cheated, they pandered to the illusion of fairness for the sake of their own ambition.  They sold us out for the potential of corporate largesse, they rigged the game.  But, the most heartbreaking thing of all will always be, they cheated.

Democrats are supposed to be fair.

So, as I read column after column of disillusioned Obama supporters bitching and moaning about how he isn’t the person they thought they were believing in him becoming when he stopped being who he was and became what they wanted him to be, I can’t help but note that the only people not questioning their decision and lying to themselves about it are black people.  For them, like for Obots of all races, if they told the truth, Obama is still all they ever needed him to be, black.  It’s just that black people have no reason to pretend otherwise.

Because, unlike the folks who needed to imbue the Obamessiah with superpowers in order to justify their support of the black man who would allow them to believe in the inherent goodness of America and the intrinsic fairness of the Democratic Party, black people have always known that all Barack Obama ever had to be was black.  Otherwise, their votes still don’t matter.

The disappointment comes to those now waking up to the reality that that’s all he is.

Cap This!

I don’t pretend to understand all (or any) of the nuances of high finance, but, in researching the post below, about Kristin Davis, Wall Street Madam, whose client list included Elliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York once dubbed the “Sheriff of Wall Street,” I found this July 23, 2003 Fast Company nagazine, Polly LeBarre interview with former hedge fund analyst and author Andy Kessler.  In this quote Kessler explains Wall Street compensation:

My boss at Morgan Stanley, Rod Berens, taught me the Wall Street birds and bees. Wall Street is about allocating capital. Great companies can get money easily. Bad ones have to pay more for it. Wall Street gets paid by controlling access to that capital, and charging fees to get it. Companies pay via banking fees and investors pay via trading commissions. That’s the easy part. The dirty little secret is that the people on Wall Street keep half of all the revenue they generate. If you look at Morgan Stanley’s or anyone else on the Street’s profit statements, you’ll see that compensation is half of their expenses. Communications is around 10%. There is interest expense. There is overhead for buildings and lights. And whatever is left over is reported to shareholders of the firm as profit. But the biggest expense is compensation, the famous bonus pool.

So, the fat cats take their money off the top, divvy it up, pay the light bill, and report what’s leftover as profit.  Which would suggest that putting a cap on bonuses, as President Black Obama did in relation to further TARP bailout allocation, would be a good idea, right?  Except…why would any company who hasn’t yet gotten it’s cut from the government, the only ones who are subject to the “salary cap” thingy, btw, belly up to Uncle Sam’s feed trough, now?  Wouldn’t they lose money?  The clients might see a significant profit if shareholders divide a larger percentage of revenue, but, who cares about them?

On the other hand, doesn’t Kessler’s explanation mean that the companies that did get bailed out split half the taxpayer money they got between themselves?  No wonder they can afford 5,000 dollar a pop hookers.  And we’re supposed to believe that the architects of the TARP didn’t know all this going in?

The only question left to my mind is what happens to the rest of the TARP money since nobody’s gonna take it if all they get to keep is a lousy 500 grand apiece?   Most of the large companies have already admitted they didn’t need the bailout money in the first place, though they took it anyway.  Seems to me, the net effect of the non-retroactive “salary cap” is to reward the big guys who already got theirs, and punish any stragglers who might come a-beggin’ because they really need the money.

Best Little Whorehouse On Wall Street

Can you say “double standard?”  Kristin Davis, escort service CEO (madam) who provided companionship by the hour to former governor Elliot Spitzer, and whose “little black book” is revealing the peccadilloes and services purchased to indulge them of some of the country’s biggest big ballers, surely can.   And she is indignantly proclaiming it loudly to anybody who’ll listen, like ABC News:

Wall street lawyers, investment bankers, CEOs and media executives often used corporate credit cards to pay for $2,000 an hour prostitutes, according to the madam who ran one of New York’s biggest and most expensive escort services until it was busted last year.

But prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office chose not to pursue any of the corporate titans, says Kristin Davis, who pleaded guilty last year to charges of running a prostitution business that used more than a hundred women.

“Used?”  Not “employed?”  There is a difference, ya know.  Whatever one thinks of the morality of the profession, there’s not a lot of difference between a madam and a CEO, or a call girl and a consultant.  Which is pretty much Davis’ point.  Either it’s a crime to indulge in prostitution, or it isn’t.  Can’t sell what nobody will buy, after all.

However, the larger point is that these poor, misunderstood, stressed out titans of industry were getting their ashes hauled using corporate credit cards that were billed for services such as “computer consulting” and “roof repair.”  Which is fraud:

Davis says one CEO ordered her to send him invoices for “roof repair on a warehouse” to disguise the payment for prostitutes from corporate funds.

“That is fraud,” said former New York prosecutor Sid Baumgarten, who told 20/20 the district attorney should have investigated the men.

“Not necessarily just for the patronizing but for the use of these business records and credit cards to see what kind of fraud or tax fraud was being used. And if so, that is a major offense,” Baumgarten said.

When ABC News contacted that CEO, he said he used his corporate card to pay for the escort service to entertain clients, but that there was no sex involved.

Davis, who can plausibly be called an entrepreneur in her own right, operated a multi-faceted organization providing a variety of services, (I’d bet the farm sex was indeed involved in all of them) until the Fed crackdown on Elliot Spitzer took her down with him:

Davis operated her escort service as a prostitution conglomerate, with five different “brands” over a four year period, each with its own “price point” and websites.

At the high end was an escort service called Carlyle Trust, mimicking the name, but not connected in any way, to a prestigious investment firm. Davis said she recruited top fashion models who charged up to $2,000 an hour for clients of Carlyle Trust.

Her lower cost services charged $400 an hour for a “body rub,” she said.

The “best little whorehouse on Wall Street” was located just a few blocks from the New York Stock Exchange, in apartment 3A at 136 William Street.

Davis operated three other “in-call” locations in the mid-town area of Manhattan.

The escort business took in as much as $200,000 a week, Davis estimated.

This is where the story gets strange.  Davis’ reputation seems to have been trashed, then, somewhat rehabilitated since the Spitzer investigation first revealed that he used her services as well as those of Mark Brener, the proprietor of the Empire Club and employer of Ashley Dupree, the woman Spitzer allegedly violated the Mann Act with by transporting her to Washington for sheet sweating, possibly on the taxpayers’ dime.  Brener was sentenced Friday to 30 months in prison for conspiracy to commit prostitution and money laundering.  Curiously, Spitzer was never arrested or prosecuted though he was forced to resign as Governor, and the Federal investigation against him was dropped 2 days after the November national election.  Probably just a coincidence.

A March 26 New York Times article reporting Kristin Davis (not the Sex in the City actress, btw) does not mention Spitzer, and charcterized her as a “woman accused of running a large prostitution ring.”  Subsequent reports, mainstream and otherwise, began to detail Davis’ involvement with the kinky governor who developed crushes on “consultants” and whined and tried to bully them into allowing him to “ride bareback.”  Davis herself was soon being described as everything from “trailer trash” to “tranny.”  Web articles here, here, here, here, and here get increasingly bitchy.

By December of last year when she was “freed” after being sentenced to 90 days, time served, and relieved of the almost $500,000 she ws arrested with, Davis, though still referred to as a “buxom blonde,” was back on her way to relative respectability.  By January of this year, Gawker was posting her opinion of celebrities’ sex worker potential.  February 6 brought us Davis’ tell all book, though the contents of her “little black book” were hinted at as early as March of last year.  Among those contents, partially verified by ABC, were these, re-printed here from the Raw Story:

* a vice president of NBC Universal (owned by General Electric)
* the part owner of a Major League Baseball team who “loves Kelsey”
* the CEO of one of the country’s largest private equity firms who met “Cameron” at the Peninsula Hotel
* a major New York real estate developer who, according to the list, “will come to the door wearing women’s panties”
* a partner at the Wall Street law firm Cravath Swaine Moore “looking for a party girl to come fully equipped” and spent a total of $20,000
* an investment banker from Lehman Brothers who saw “Kelsey and Keely together” and later saw “Aria and Skyler at the same time”
* an investment banker at JP Morgan Securities who “loves Brooke” and spent $41,600
* an investment banker at Goldman Sachs who “only wanted all-American girls” and spent $27,000
* a managing director from Merrill Lynch who saw “Lana” using the name “Nataly”
* a managing director from Deutsche Bank “who called about seeing Nataly again”

Spitzer, whose identity as Mark Brener’s, not Kristin Davis’, Client Number 9, was leaked to the media and confirmed by a “person briefed on the case,” took a big hit to his reputation as the “Sheriff of Wall Street,” an appellation earned from his efforts as New York State Attorney General to reform the financial industry, though some say those efforts didn’t go far enough.  In light of the allegations of impropriety, and his subsequent resignation 2 days later, Wall Street took delight and unabashedly celebrated his predicament, while trashing his previous accomplishments.  Some sources even began to go so far as to dismiss Spitzers triumphs as hollow victories.

As AG, however, Spitzer’s efforts were initially welcomed by industry watchdogs.  Salon even called him “Wall Street’s Worst Nightmare.”  So, what happened?  Some speculate that the leak of his implication in the Federal investigation and possibly even the investigation itself was tantamount to a political “hit” orchestrated by forces furious with the governor’s reform efforts against companies like Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and AIG, among others.

Lost in the allegations of hypocrisy leveled at Spitzer for his indulgences with prostitutes while self-righteously prosecuting prostitution rings to the fullest extent of the law, was the fact that he had set his reformer sights on industries other than pimps and money-changers.  According to Business Week, in December 2002, Spitzer served notice to the Hyde Park crowd:

Who’s to blame for expensive prescription drugs, pollution, and the biased research coming out of Wall Street? Try pinning the rap on the University of Chicago.

At least that was New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s attempted in a Dec. 4 speech to financial-services executives at the annual Banker of The Year dinner. At the banquet, which was held in New York’s Helmsley Palace, Spitzer blasted the University of Chicago for encouraging recent market excesses with a philosophical curriculum that teaches less regulation is always good for capitalism. The audience listened respectfully, but many, especially the University of Chicago alums, privately voiced their disagreement with Spitzer’s thesis later in the evening.

As a voice of laissez-faire economics, the University of Chicago has shaped much of the dialogue over market regulation in recent years, starting with Ronald Reagan’s Administration in 1980. Free markets, the theory goes, will correct most excesses by making it impossible for those guilty of bad behavior to survive. “They’ve said that intervention by…government is wrong,” Spitzer said. “But they haven’t taken into account that markets can have structural flaws.” Contacted by BusinessWeek Online for a reaction, University of Chicago professor of business and economics Kevin Murphy said Spitzer’s interpretation of the schools position was simplistic. Says Murphy: “I think we have better things to do than beat up a straw man.”

Hmmm…Bear Stearns, University of Chicago, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Wall Street…straw man?  2002?  Didn’t Rod Blagojevich say something about prescription drugs?

I know what you’re thinking, but, nah, couldn’t be.  This is a story about prostitutes and double standards, remember?  Doesn’t have anything to do with bailouts and presidents.  Who was on Kristin Davis’ list, again?

Drift Away Desperado

Since the country’s wet-behind-the-ears President with the barely dry ink on his swearing-in papers (I don’t think they have to sign anything for real, but they should, especially with this guy, it would be nice if we had his commitment in writing) is feelin’ kinda restless after being cooped up in the White House with his wife, mother-in-law and kids between speaking engagements, for going on a whole two weeks now, I thought I’d offer this playlist for his iPod or whatever device he usually uses to listen to the toe tappin’, ‘ho slappin’, big-ballin,’ Motown jazz morphed into All-American easy listening motivational music he favors, to try to soothe his “restless soul.”

Desperado – The Eagles

Drift Away – Dobie Gray

Butterfly – Mariah Carey

Leaving On A Jet Plane – Peter Paul and Mary

Getaway – Earth, Wind and Fire

Free – Denise Williams

Feel free to add to the list, we all need to do our part to help our stressed out Jr. President-In-Training get through the downtime between reading other people’s words from a distance to fruit-flavored powdered substance enhanced devotees of the mundane.  Putting up with a houseful of females who don’t even have a dog to yell at while you’re away saving the world with a Coke Pepsi and a smile is hard.  Really hard.  George Bush hard.  There’s only so much pickup basketball a man can play to avoid the effects of estrogen overload after putting everything he’s got into inspiring strangers with platitudes on the rubber chicken circuit.  Hell, even Wagyu beef gets bland and tasteless after a while.  So, let’s cut the man some slack and at least offer him some mellow music in case something happens that needs a president’s attention and he has to cut his vacation short.  He’s earned it.  Presidenting is hard.

It’s not like we have any real simmering problems waiting to erupt, or nuttin’.

Astrotrurf Don’t Grow Like Grassroots

With the Senate Democrats desperately trying to give their Neophyte Naked Emperor cum Fearless Leader, Black Obama, at least the appearance of victory in pushing forth his “stimulus package,” (sounds dirty, doesn’t it?) a bill characterized by some as “bloated” and “pork-filled,” and by others as “disastrous,” though, designed to benefit the whole country, in truth, it is roughly equivalent to the recent TARP bill and auto bailout of a handful of bankers and executives, making it to my mind “suspicious,” the Petulant President has decided he likes campaigning much better than presidenting.  So, he’s gathering up the old gang, putting the campaign machine in gear, and taking his ass act on the road.  He’s also taking to the airwaves, and bugging his supporters on his most awesomely awesome super-duper, unrivaled in history, double dog dope donor email list, to…get together…chat…watch a film… and, of course, talk about him and his big ol’ “stimulus package.”  Can you say HeadOState?  Sure, you can.

The only problem, well, one of a couple of problems, okay the only problem out of many I’m going to talk about, except maybe one or two others, is, nobody’s buying.   The networks are bitching about having to preempt their popular, revenue-generating shows for yet more presidential pontification, his stump speech is stale, as we saw in his ubiquitous YouTube video of his “fired up and ready to pass a stimulus bill that’s ‘good enough’,” speech to House Democrats, and his warm, fuzzy, touchy-feely hugs ‘n house parties thingy is a big, fat, juicy bust.  From McClatchy:

Few supporters are answering President Barack Obama’s call for nationwide house-party gatherings this weekend to build grass-roots support for his economic stimulus plan.

A McClatchy survey of sign-up rosters for a score of cities across the country revealed only 34 committed attendees in Tacoma, Wash. , as of midafternoon Friday; in Fort Worth, Texas , only 54, and in Sacramento, Calif. , just 78.

“Before the election, we would have had 500 to 800,” said Kim Mack , 46, a Sacramento city-facility manager who’s hosted house parties for political figures and causes since the mid-’90s.

Even in Washington , policy-wonk capital of the nation, only about 500 people had signed up.

But don’t feel bad, (I knew you wouldn’t) it’s obviously only the fickle, bitter, clingy, gun-owning, Bible-toting, ex-Clinton supporters and caucus-courted crossover Republicans who have abandoned him in his time of obvious need, (2 weeks into his presidency) they still love them some Oblackguy in San Francisco:

President Obama may be in danger of losing some support on the stimulus package, but, well, he’s always got the Bay Area. People here are ready to par-tay for the stimulus package.

As Comrade Marinucci told us the other day, The O is back in campaign mode, using his team’s online savvy to facilitate real-world face-to-face connections. So far, there are 66 house parties within 45 miles of San Francisco organized this weekend through Obama’s “Organizing for America” to discuss how to support the O on the stimulus package.

From the tone of the article, they seem to be quite fond of “stimulus packages” in general.  Anyway, since you’re probably not going to make it to Elkhart, Indiana to watch him read the Greatest Stimulus Package Speech By A Sitting President Evfuckinger, and, you might not want to spend what little money you have left after the government splits the contents of the nation’s coffers 50-50 with the bankers/automobile industry and everybody else in the country but you, I have thoughtfully provided you with all the “make your own stimulus party” gear you could ever need in your whole entire freaking life.

First, get all the people in your house you can push around together in front of the computer, then go here to get your marching orders instructions helpful hints and tips.  Then, watch the video below.  It’s long, and, it’s Tim Kaine going on and on, so you’re gonna need a lot of beer, but, you’re gonna need that anyway, and will probably be pretty well on the way to full-on tanked by the time Timmy gets the intro out.  Frankly, it’s the only way.  Then, eat the chips and dip and other peanut butter-free snacks while you make your hostages family discuss the cinematique classique you just tried to watch so you can formulate the thoughts you want to put down on paper line and send to Obama Forever when you sober up.  Try to have at least one prize on hand to award to the first person who can figure out the point of the day’s event, and you’re all set.  They’ll thank you for it, one day.

And, the Davids Axelrod and Plouffe will be so proud.

Dreams of Obama

With the country in a headlong freefall to economic hell in a borrowed handbasket, the continued Obama obsession of some in the media is just a little too scary to be as funny as it should be.  There are actually people printing their intimate fantasies of Dumbo Ears and his lovely wife, the First Lady of GLOW (okay, that was uncalled for, but, hey, it’s the weekend).  This is just wrong on so many levels.  People really have dreams of him?  And her?  Together or separately, that’s just…fully freakin’ creepy-assed bizarre.  The fact that anybody would share such thoughts, dreams and fantasies in any forum, even a solitary, anonymous one like cyberspace, is just…unbelievably…spooky.  And really, really hard to fathom.  Anyway, the New York Times‘ Judith Warner unnecessarily shared her Freudian field day of a dream of having a visiting Barack Obama smoking a cigarette in her shower, preventing her from shaving her legs, while her husband yelled at him for smoking in the house.  The mental picture she conjures boggles the rational mind, but, her readers, asked to share their fantasies, manage to kick the “ewwwwowwww” factor up to 11:30.

Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president. In these dreams, the women replaced Michelle with greater or lesser guilt or, in the case of a 62-year-old woman in North Florida, whose dream was reported to me by her daughter, found a fully above-board solution: “Michelle had divorced Barack because he had become ‘too much of a star.’ He then married my mother, who was oh so proud to be the first lady,” the daughter wrote me.

There was some daydreaming too, much of it a collective fantasy about the still-hot Obama marriage. “Barack and Michelle Obama look like they have sex. They look like they like having sex,” a Los Angeles woman wrote to me, summing up the comments of many. “Often. With each other. These days when the sexless marriage is such a big celebrity in America (and when first couples are icons of rigid propriety), that’s one interesting mental drama.”

Barf me the fuck out!  Gag me with a spoon ladle.  Yuck, tooey, foo!  Talk about weirdObots!  Oh, man, I soooo don’t need this, so I thought I’d share.  Not every entry invoked images of wrinkly seniors cavorting with a stick figure, or slobbering soccer moms diddling in the Lincoln bedroom closet as they watched the First Couple of Color canoodling; one wanted to make Barack “the perfect sandwich, (arugula on waffles, maybe?) or sharing a tuna fish sandwich with Michelle (oh, really?) while the kids had a playdate in the basement.  That last one’s waaaaay to Freudian for a layperson like me.

One woman wrote that when she couldn’t get to sleep at night, she “lay in bed and thought about the Obama girls in their rooms at the White House. I thought about Marian Robinson up on the third floor. And about Barack and Michelle, a couple who clearly have a ‘thing’ for each other, spooning together in bed. It helped me relax.”

Are you frightened yet, boys and girls?  I know I am.  There Are No Words:

Another Washington woman, a global health care consultant, expressed her sense of Obama-inadequacy in a dream: “I dreamed I was an Obama girl. I had a chance to be in the same room with him for the first time. There were dark velvet chairs and he was standing there with all this dark and mist around him. His lips so purple and sensuous as if to be otherworldly,” she wrote to me. “I moved gently toward him and then I said the wrong thing. Obama tamped it down like some vapor that didn’t register. He wasn’t even flattered.”

Okay, you get the idea.  The rest of the column as well as some of the reader comments continue in this warped vein, but thankfully, there are enough, “you people are sick,” “get a life” type responses to not only give one hope, but provide a really good belly laugh.  But, seriously, the whole thing is just plain creepy weird.

Teflon TelePrompTer Reader Pimping Primetime

Spokesmodel-In-Chief, Black Obama, is pimping primetime TV, and the networks are sick of it.  However, like most blackmail victims, they feel powerless to stop it.  Yeah, right.  (snort)  From the Washington Post:

President Obama’s desire to talk — and talk, and talk — to the American public could cost broadcast networks millions, and millions, and millions of prime-time TV dollars.

Broadcasters are bracing themselves for the likelihood of three prime-time interruptions in three weeks, totaling at least three hours of prime time — and ad breaks — yanked.

“His economic stimulus package apparently does not extend to the TV networks,” one network exec noted.

Seems the Pampered Pres’ primetime preemptions of the networks’ popular programming on the next subsequent Monday nights and the following week’s Tuesday night are causing execs to bitch and moan, according to Lisa de Morales, WaPo’s television columnist.  Wah, wah, wah.  Too bad.  Only now that pumping up the Pres is costing them real money do they start seeing the potential downside.  Not that enthusiastically endorsing a particular candidate might compromise objectivity even now that he’s president is a bad thing, mind you, the bigwigs see nothing wrong with that.  No, their concern is for themselves and the little guy. (big honkin’ snort)

Although the broadcast networks can opt out of carrying these presidential appearances, “you don’t want to incur the wrath of the White House” because “if you’re on the [poop] list, you are last in line for interviews and things like that,” one network exec explained.

But besides the economic hit, broadcasters are worried that this kind of shock-and-awe approach to prime-time preempting might be part of an Obama strategy to charm his way to a new economic-rescue plan. “As we’re meeting this guy, from a network perspective, it’s like, ‘Is this part of the plan for him?’ ” the network exec said. “Is this what it’s going to be: Is he going to take to the airwaves every time he has something to say?”

Such a strategy, of course, could backfire.

“Do people really want to come home after looking for a job, or after being at a job they hate, sit down to veg out in front of their favorite show — and he’s on again?” said one TV suit, who suspects/hopes the Average Joe’s reaction to too much Obamavision might be “nothing he’s going to say is going to help me get a job, or put food on the table.”

Gee, how nice that they’re concerned about “Obamavision” now.  Though, ya gotta wonder what rock they’ve been living under not to appreciate their own complicity in creating this particular Frankenstein.  Didn’t the networks jump on the Rock Star World Tour bus, and accommodate their schedules for that expanded convention extravaganza, not to mention their collective news divisions’ constant fluffing?  I wonder if they think too many pre-emptions of “House” and The Batchelor” might cause Jane and Joe Public to blame them for dooming us to the prospect of 4 more years of Ober-exposure?

Ya think?

Can you say “infomercial?”

Defending Government By Astroturf

The latest trumpeter of the “Obama Drama Equals Bad PR” song, Marc Ambinder is the most recent addition to the growing chorus of Obama fluffers playing what’s rapidly becoming a hauntingly familiar and disturbingly discordant  tune.  The reason the American public is getting impatient with the whole stimulus bill kerfuffle and the Spokesmodel in Chief’s early performance of presidential duty is not because they fear it is a bloated, most likely ineffective bill that will probably cost them money in the long run, or they’re afraid that he really is the empty suit he’s been accused of being and now actually appears to be, but because the Republicans got to tell the public more bad stories than the Obama team could effectively Astroturf over.  We, the people, are only upset with Obama’s cabinet picks’ lack of ethics and stuff because Fox News made a big deal about it, so the theory goes.  News outlet after news outlet is putting forth variations of this Axelrod-generated theme, straight-faced, no chaser, and offering the sage advice that all that’s needed to lead us transparently on the way to financial recovery is a really good TelePrompTer-read speech, the kind the candidate Obama used to read in front of thousands of people who had already pledged their love and devotion to him by attending his campaign rallies.  That anyone would dismiss legitimate criticisms of a president’s performance as merely opposition pushback in a spin war is bad enough, to use it as a defense for incompetence is appalling.  To forget that half the country is not predisposed to embrace anything that comes out of his mouth as gospel is stupid.

If Obama sucks, he sucks because he sucks, not because Rush Limbaugh says he sucks.  Whether Obama forcefully denies that he sucks or not, does not change the fact that he does or he doesn’t.  So, why are so many people in the media, mainstream and otherwise, rallying behind the “he’s just been getting bad pr” theme?

Like Politico, Ambinder blames the lack of bipartisan support for Obama’s stimulus plan, and all his other problems in the first two weeks in office, on the White House email system.  According to these guys, the problem is not that Obama was trying to stuff the cabinet with crooks, and shove a high-fat and cholesterol pork-laden stimulus plan down the country’s throats on top of the mystery-shrouded TARP, or that his bumbling outreach for Republican support was clumsy, stupid and unnecessary, it was because the ancient email system didn’t allow reporters to get their talking points in a timely enough manner:

When news of Daschle’s car-and-driver tax problem was disclosed, the White House faced an immediate communications challenge. Mr. Obama had campaign on a platform of single standards and transparency, and here he seemed to be making an exception for a good friend of his on the basis of, well, nothing but the friendship.

He campaigned on a platform of blocking lobbyists from serving in his administration, but he had just given several of them a waiver, and here was standing by a Washington insider who ostensibly (although unintentionally) broke the law to the tine of over $100,000.

I know White House aides were worried about this appearance, but I also know they had a tough time figuring out which reporter was working on which story, and they didn’t respond to events as quickly as Republicans in Congress were able to exploit them.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama’s team was known for its ability to proceed along several tracks simultaneously. It’s been harder in the White House.

The trouble with Daschle bled over into the debate about Mr. Obama’s stimulus principles, forcing the White House to use Mr. Obama’s personal charm as a pitchman. He spent three hours of daylight in television interviews on Tuesday.

Nobody is offering any practical advice on how to fix the bill in a way that efficiently serves the public’s interests, or pushing for Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat to be fired and replaced in an effort to shore up the Neophyte Naked Emperor’s ethical transparent government creds.  Nope, just give a speech, send out some emails, manage the message, massage the messengers.  Why not?  That’s what got him elected.  But the presidency is not a 4 year campaign for the next election, or at least, it shouldn’t be.  And even if that is an element of a politician’s life, it is not the goal of governing.  You don’t perpetually run for office and do a little of the people’s business on the side.  Unless you’re Barack Obama.

That’s why he has met his ultimate Peter Principle level of incompetence, and will ultimately fail.  He probably reached it earlier, but the miracle of elections as popularity contests obscured that particular truth until now.  Unfortunately for him, and us, there’s no higher office to try to attain; it’s put up or shut up time.  And sadly, his media baby sitters, enablers, and defenders don’t realize that every time they blame his setbacks on the opposition’s better campaign spin, rather than a rectifiable lapse of some sort on his part, they admit he’s got nothing else.

Somehow, the Post-Racial President’s “it ain’t perfect, but it’s something” argument in support of a 900 billion dollar spending spree during yet another “this is our moment” rah-rah, just doesn’t cut it for me.

Now, I believe that legislation of such magnitude deserves the scrutiny that it’s received, and you will get another chance to vote for this bill in the days to come. But I urge all of us to not make the perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary. The scale and scope of this plan is right.

Sez you.

He Gives Good Speech

Earlier today I wrote about how, with his stimulus bill tanking like the Ty-Dee Bowl Man, his tax cheat Band of Thieves cabinet appointments dropping like flies, and his pay-to-play associations inviting too much scrutiny into his personal history of political thuggery,  MSNBC was encouraging Barack Obama to get in full candidate mode and read a rousing stimulus bill speech from a TelePrompter, (because that’s what he does best, and, pretty much the only thing anybody can pretend he’s reasonably good at) since people were starting to hate him.  Politico also jumped into the fray, pointing out that Camp/Team/Administration O had “lost control” of its message due to those pesky government ethics rules and the usual, “where’s the computer cords box?” snafus inherent in any move, exacerbated by the disconnect between the super cool Space Age tech savvy of the Obama geeks and the antiquated, out of touch Bushian White House electronics dinosaur:

The Jetsons versus the Flinstones

Obama’s campaign was lauded for its visionary use of modern tools for old-fashioned politics. Through the Internet, it recruited supporters, collected dollars, rallied supporters and organized get-out-the vote operations.

But when these modern heroes arrived at the White House, it was like the lights all went out. Their contact with their millions-fold supporters was cut off, literally, as e-mail systems broke down and ‘The List’ of political supporters was blocked at the iron gate.

To meet government ethics rules, the campaign operation and its grass-roots army were forced to de-camp to the Democratic National Committee, robbing the president of one of his most potent political weapons just as the stimulus bill was under consideration in the House.

So, I guess the Blackberry-addicted Obacrats got the memo, because blast Astroturf  emails and text messages seem to have gone out to every Bluetoothed PDA,  iPhone and laptop owned by footsoldiers in every Obot den from corporate newsrooms to moldy basements to mocha-choca la-di-da latte shoppes to campus computer labs across the blogosphere.  They all got the message, “pump props to pres preach chops.”  While Obie’s WaPo op-ed speech  gets tepid acknowledgement and little praise even from his most fervent fluffers, his pep talk to House Democrats has everybody all a-twitter in the throes of pre-Iowa-type, light shining down, pseudo-sexual/religious orgasmic ecstacy.

ABC’s Jake Tapper called the Teflon TelePrompter reading Spokesmodel in Chief “feisty.”  Oooooooh.  Huff ‘nPuff breathlessly described how the Chocolate Wonder shed his usual Urkel-ness and channeled his inner Mandingo as he “forcefully pushed” his stimulus plan, Politico relished his bad boy “fired up” ditching of the Traveling TelePrompTer, and Kathy from Left Field was just “thrilled.”

TPM’s Josh Marshall, like all the sources quoted, as well as all the others I read, claimed Obie should take his “great speech” on the road, campaign-style.  I guess he was in withdrawal and had his jones fixed with the  return of the “this is the moment” stuff.

Looks like all the usual suspects got the “he gives good speech” memo, so we get the “ain’t he the shit?’ news.  Nobody said the stimulus bill got any better, though.  Maybe he should stop paying attention to the “talk a good game” crowd and listen to this guy.

Takin’ It To The Streets

For all PUMAs who’ve been telling me they’re ready to march on Washington, some walkin’ music.  Rock out as you read on:

Stimulus Bill Tanking Because Obama’s Not On TV Enough

Politico and MSNBC’s First Read agree, so it must be true; the reason the public is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the stimulus bill and the president pushing it is simply because he’s so shy and retiring that he’s reluctant to get the message out to the country directly.  As near as I can tell, they’re serious.  From Politico:

At this crucial juncture in the push to pass an economic recovery package, President Barack Obama finds himself in the most unlikely of places: He is losing the message war.

Despite Obama’s sky-high personal approval ratings, polls show support has declined for his stimulus bill since Republicans and their conservative talk-radio allies began railing against what they labeled as pork barrel spending within it.

Well, if it’s just a pushback against talk radio, the answer’s obvious, according to MSNBO; all the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader has to do is get back in campaign mode:

The president is ramping up the rhetoric as he tries to get back on offense to sell his economic stimulus plan. It started yesterday with two events, where for the first time in public he reminded folks who won the election, pointing to the scoreboard. And now he has an op-ed in the Washington Post. The op-ed’s message — not to the public, but rather to Washington (i.e. Congress and the media) — makes another case for passage of the plan. Of course, the irony of this ramping up is that it’s the Republicans who have come after this bill like a campaign, finding the negatives in the smallest of places and creating bumper-sticker attacks on them. The White House didn’t seem ready to deal with the small-ball campaign tactics, hoping they could stay at 30,000 feet when selling the stimulus. Well, think again.

Obama’s op-ed in MSNBO’s corporate partner, the Washington Post, (along with the New York Times, Newsweek, Slate, Newsvine, and the Root) is just another component of the typical Obama media assault now being reported by his footsoldiers as “news.”  They really think we’re stupid.  Daily briefings from White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, to CNN’s Paul Begala and James Carville, and ABC’s George Stephanopolis help to facilitate the cover-all-bases “governing by media drive-by” Organizing for America “let’s send out blogosphere marching orders diguised as house party announcements” Axelrod Astroturfing You Tube approach.

Maybe Obama’s on TV waaaay too much to effectively do the job we’ve been saying all along that he’s unqualified for, ya think?

Obama Suggests You Pray

No wonder President Black Obama’s administration is in such a rush to establish an official office of We Suggest You Pray.  Besides the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader’s ever-increasingly less pretty speeches, that’s all they got.  While some may harbor concerns about that whole “separation of Church and State” thingy, I say, you might just want to hold off on passing judgment on that one.  At some point in the very near future, we just might all welcome a National Soup Kitchen and government subsidized homeless shelters on Army bases.  Because, the bankers will soon have all our money, and our president is in a George Bush-on-the-way-to-Iraq type hurry to give it to them.

Despite the fact that many of the poor people sleepwalking with the shade on the light (to paraphrase Steely Dan) by choice are dreaming happy thoughts and giving high-fives to His Awesomeness for his hand-on-hips, get tough, hand spank of those greedy Wall Street CEOs, none of the CEOs in question are losing any sleep at all.  The Obamessiah has decreed from On High that absolutely, positively, no body, ya hear me? nobody, not one single, solitary, money-grubbing, nogoodnik of a scummy bank CEO on the friggin’ planet will, shall, or might get a penny, shekel, farthing or ducat over $500,000 per anum if they take the government’s “extraordinary assistance.”  Got that?  Good.  And don’t you ever forget it, either.  Yawn. From Bloomberg, the president:

“For top executives to award themselves these kinds of compensation packages in the midst of this economic crisis is not only in bad taste, it’s a bad strategy, and I will not tolerate it as president,” Obama said yesterday.

Yet none of the new rules will apply to any firm until it negotiates an extraordinary deal with the federal government to remain solvent.

Uh, see, (ahem) the, uh, “bailout” money they already got?  Yeah, well, here’s the thing, that’snotaffectedbythenewrules.  Seems like all the banks and financial institutions that have already been “bailed out” are exempt from the new rules; unless and until one of them tries to get some more government money they don’t really need.  And even then, there’s wiggle room aplenty on that salary cap thing, as any sports fan could have told you from the start.  Now, I know I gave you two things to chew on in this paragraph, one, some banks didn’t really need the bailout money they took and two, wiggle room.  Let’s start with the wiggle:

In addition, some executives may be compensated for the potential reduced salaries with restricted stock grants, which may result in huge paydays after the bank repays the government assistance with interest.

“They’re just allowing companies to defer compensation,” said Graef Crystal, a former compensation consultant and author of “The Crystal Report on Executive Compensation.”

The restrictions are “a joke,” he said, because “if the government is paid pack, you can be sure that the stock will have risen hugely.”

Now the sizzle, fuh shizzle.  Since the new rules only apply to those banks that come back for more of the gazillions being allocated for them, firms like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan Chase should be among those most properly chastened by the Jr. President’s bitch slap, right?  Ha.  They didn’t need the money in the first place, and won’t be coming back.  Let’s take them in order, according to Bloommie.  First, Morgan Stanley:

For some firms, the rules are insignificant. Morgan Stanley is among companies that don’t expect the restrictions to affect their business because they foresee no need for additional government help.

“We have one of the highest Tier 1 capital ratios among financial services firms, so we do not anticipate the need for additional government capital,” said Mark Lake, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley in New York, when asked about the new restrictions.

Next, Goldman Sachs:

Goldman Sachs said yesterday it wants to repay $10 billion it got from Treasury under the TARP to signal the firm is healthy and to escape limitations that came with that infusion of money. “Our financial condition is sound and, subject to approval from regulators, we hope to repay TARP money as soon as practicable,” said Lucas van Praag, a spokesman for New York- based Goldman Sachs.

Lastly, JP Morgan:

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said Feb. 3 that the firm didn’t need capital and didn’t ask for TARP funding. The lender accepted the $25 billion it received from the first capital injection at the request of the government and to help stabilize the banking system, he said.

Get that?  They didn’t need the money, the government made them take it!  Ho, ho!  You fools!  And now, Iceberg Lettuce, President Pimp, is frantically waving his arms and shouting, “Hurry, hurry, the ship is sinking, get in!”  And all his bitches in the media are working overtime to inform you of the truth while making it seem like a lie, much like a sneaky mom hides the kids’ peas under the mashed potatoes knowing that by the time the kid figures it out, he/she will have consumed a healthy enough amount.  And, who knows, the kid might even like ‘em, right?  On the other hand, they might hate them, and even if they don’t, they might feel so betrayed upon learning of their own mother’s subterfuge that they never eat peas or trust their mother, or any other woman, again.  But, let’s not think about that right now!  We’ve got to do what’s best for the kids!  Right?  Right?  Right?!?!

Oh, and I guess that whole Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan big Obie donors thing is just a coinkidinky, huh?  And Jamie Dimon being on the NY Fed Board of Governors is probably meaningless.  And, Henry Paulson (formerly of Goldman Sachs, Midwestern Division) and Jamie Dimon both having Chicago connections is just a fluke, too?  And, Barack Obama being a faith pimp for votes since his community organizing days probably has nothing to do with the new Office of Holy Crap!

Obama traces his own religious awakening to his days working as a community worker in Chicago and said that both secular and faith groups working to improve people’s lives were vital in the deep economic recession.

Sleep well, clueless ones; the screaming you hear in your heads is just an audio illusion.  And, if you should awaken, try not to rock the boat; we’re taking on water at an amazing clip as it is.  Just…pray.  Or, lay back and think of England.

Whose Art Is This, Anyway?

The Associated Press says that the most annoyingly ubiquitous piece of Obama pseudo-art in the whole, entire freaking universe and beyond, and then ten paces beyond that, Shep Fairey’s “Hope-A-Dope” horror movie-colored Warhol Soup Can ripoff (can you tell I don’t like it?) infringes their copyright.  From an AP article posted on CBS News:

The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia at the National Press Club in Washington.

The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.

“The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission,” the AP’s director of media relations, Paul Colford, said in a statement.

So, this Fairey guy, who supposedly has a badass maverick rebel’s disregard for “da roolz,” Googles “Obama photo,” finds one, steals it, and uses it without permission to make money?  Open and shut no-brainer, right?  Don’t be dense.  Haven’t you ever heard of “fair use?”

“We believe fair use protects Shepard’s right to do what he did here,” says Fairey’s attorney, Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University and a lecturer at the Stanford Law School. “It wouldn’t be appropriate to comment beyond that at this time because we are in discussions about this with the AP.”

Fair use is a legal concept that allows exceptions to copyright law, based on, among other factors, how much of the original is used, what the new work is used for and how the original is affected by the new work.

I wish I hadn’t read that.  Every time I hear the word “fair” associated with an Obamazoid, I’m reminded of Harold Ickes pleading with the Rules and Bylaws Committee of my old party, the Democrats, to apply the party’s own standards of “fair reflection” in determining the outcome of Florida and Michigan’s delegate appropriation in light of their “rule breaker” status, only to be told by Carl Levin that “fair reflection” couldn’t be applied to a flawed process.  Bastard.

I’m sorry, but I remember every minute of that fiasco of a debacle of a circus of a joke, and I’m still so fucking pissed off about it, I get happy every time another creep assed fuck seems to realize just how screwed we all are because they encouraged and enabled the KoolAid pushing “boneheaded screw-up” they were sucking off to cheat and exploit the system all the way to the White House.  Now, they all want to know why he seems to be so tentative, wishy-washy, unsure.  Because that’s what he always was, you dipshits! That’s who he is! When you (s)elect an inexperienced, incompetent, TelePrompTer reader as Commander in Chief, that’s what you get.  And when you cheat to do it, that’s just so much worse.

Obama’s fighting Pelosi and sucking up to Republicans.  No shit?  We told you he was going to do that.  We yelled our heads off and blogged our fingers raw, and you followed your leader’s email instructions and sabotaged us at every turn.   And cheated.

I’ve written blog posts about it, as have many others, including Alegre, who says we must never forget.  I agree.  We must never allow the Pretender President and all his paid-off enablers to forget that we remember, and let them get away with re-writing their clear-cut history of cheating.

In Michigan, nobody was supposed to campaign or fund raise, but there was no imperative to remove one’s name from the ballot.  The state was having a primary, anyway, so what noble stance would one be taking by removing one’s name from a “beauty contest” that “wasn’t going to count for anything?”  The obvious answer is kiss my ass, none.  Just like there was no reason to campaign for votes under the guise of encouraging Democrats, Republicans, and Independents to vote “uncommitted” in a “beauty contest that wasn’t going to count.  Like Barack Obama did.

This blogger at Our Michigan laid it all out.  However, Obama’s intentions were never secret; the Washington Post, CNN, Politico, Huffington Post, Newsweek, and others documented the ploy, all giving complimentary details of the John and Monica Conyers/Carl Levin-led campaign to get people to vote “uncommitted” for Barack Obama.  They needn’t have bothered; it was on my.barackobama.com, now Organizing for America:

A group of several hundred Michigan voters plan to knock on doors, make calls and hold rallies for a rather unconventional candidate in next Tuesday’s primary — “Uncommitted.”

The only way that backers of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards or New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who withdrew their names from Michigan’s Democratic primary ballot, can show their support is to vote “uncommitted.”

Detroiters for Uncommitted Voters, most of whom say they are supporting Obama, want to make sure that people don’t avoid the polls Tuesday because their favorite candidate isn’t on the ballot.

“We really want to educate people on what they should do,” former Wayne County Commissioner Edna Bell said. “If Michigan voters want change, the uncommitted vote is their way to make their voices heard.”

He cheated.  So, it’s no surprise that one of his followers is doing the same thing.  The only surprise is that so many people seem so surprised how things are turning out.

Magical Mystery Meltdown

It was inevitable that the wheels would be forced off the Magical Mystery Tour bus that delivered Black Obama to the White House soon after arrival, given the vast number of people, places and things packed under it like sardines in a can, or ass stuffed in John Goodman’s belly-lapped jeans.  And, even though it indicates that the country will soon need to find a handbasket big enough to transport us all to the hell of financial collapse to which we’re headed, it sure is fun to watch.

While the new president marks time pontificating in press conferences, as he seems pathologically compelled to do, issuing empty edicts, spouting sound and fury, signifying nothing, even his staunchest supporters are beginning to scratch their heads and whine like bitches babies.  The Free Republic crowd (yeah, I go there, how’re you gonna ever get balance if you keep leaning to one side?) is delighting in this Chris Matthews Hardball disillusioned pout, featured on Finkelblog:

Then, there’s this Politico’s Glenn Thrush revelation that according to one of the Dems voting “no” on the House stimulus bill, Rep. Jim Cooper, Obama’s White House wanted him to:

“Well, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I actually got some quiet encouragement from the Obama folks for what I’m doing,” said Cooper, one of about 55 House Democrats to sign a letter criticizing Speaker Nancy Pelosi for suspending normal debate and committee rules on the $819 billion package.

Cooper made the admission on Liberadio, prompting Hot Air’s Ed Morrisey to ask if the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader has “gone to war” with Nancy Pelosi, as if that were a bad thing.  OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers wants to know what the hell Obama thinks he’s doing, (as if he knows) and, what the hell he wants his supporters to do about it:

Tuesday night I was on a conference call with Organizing For America, what the Obama campaign structure has morphed into since the campaign. I, along with thousands of other former Obama campaign volunteers, expected to get our marching orders, told who we should telephone, e-mail, visit, blog about – whatever it took to get the best possible stimulus legislation out of Congress.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, we heard about house parties for the weekend and future conference calls. Building blocks for the future – yes. But action for the here and now? No.

This has been bugging Chris for a couple of days, now, and he’s not alone.  San Francisco Chronicle’s Phil Bronstein is so befuddled by Obama’s recent antics, he feels like…well, I’ll let him tell you how he feels:

I feel like a pinball in a machine where Travis Bickle, in his more caffeinated mohawk stage, is working the levers. I don’t know what to think, which is in keeping with the general unreality of our financial mess at the moment.

Barney Frank knows what to think, and he’s not shy about saying so, either, according to Politico:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has this very blunt message for bankers:

“People really hate you, and they’re starting to hate us because we’re hanging out with you. And you have to help us deal with that.”

The financial institutions that need congressional help “need to avoid being stupid,” Frank told reporters Tuesday during a briefing on his agenda as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Seems ol’ Barn was alluding to The Rock Obama’s CEO smackdown, you smellin’ what he’s cookin’?  The only problem with this “new sheriff in town” tough guy stance is that it’s just a bunch of public relations hooey, according to the Associated Press, Forbes, CBS News, and  even MSNBC, though some (L)Obotomized outlets, like CNN are reporting that the reprecussions of Obadass’s rules will be so terrifyingly effective that soon every industry in the country will voluntarily adopt them.

Lastly, there’s this November 6, 2008 essay entitled, “No He Can’t” by Dr. Anne Wortham, which I believe was first posted on Lew Rockwell.com, now  circulating as an e-mail.  Though info on Dr. Wortham (pictured above, the only one I could find) is sketchy, it seems she is indeed a sociology professor at Illinois State University as the email claims.  The article has been validated here, and here, and, her bio appears here, and, though the Hoover Institution does not list her; it’s unclear if they list any visiting scholars.  A book called “The Other Side of Racism” by Anne Wortham, is available on Amazon.com.  Anyway, since the entire essay has been posted in numerous places elsewhere, I will reprint it here, after the jump, with the full email  introduction.  While many are dismissive of Dr. Wortham, and her conclusions seem a little too Republican for my taste, I personally would like to nominate her as Honorary PUMA Mother.

Obama: The Boneheaded Screw-Up

Hey, I can spot a trend when I see one.  Whenever now-President Black Obama wants pity, sympathy and absolution, he calls himself a “bonehead” or a “screw-up.”  When he wants to divert attention from his “boneheaded screw-ups” he calls them “distractions.”  Both of these terms are signals to his defenders in the mainstream media and blogosphere to pick up the torch and light the way to forgiveness.  It’s been going on for at least two years, and so far, it works like a charm.

In December 2006, the Washington Post quoted Obiteme admitting that his cozy land deal with Tony Rezko was a “boneheaded mistake:”

“There’s no doubt that this was a mistake on my part. ‘Boneheaded’ would be accurate,” Obama said in a telephone interview Friday. “There’s no doubt I should have seen some red flags in terms of me purchasing a piece of property from him.”

Of course, in December of 2007, FactCheck completely absolves him of any wrongdoing, as have many other sympathetic news sources since.  Once Hillary Clinton raised the slumlord’s name in conjunction with The Chosen, she was predictably slammed for blasting He Who Had Been Exonerated, since Obama had given Tony’s campaign contributions to charity, for goodness sakes.  By the time Rezko went to trial, the whole thing was an unfortunate “distraction.”

When a March 2007 New York Times article broke the news that Obama was involved in a couple of questionable 2005 stock deals,  My.BarackObama.com, now Organizing for America, quickly pooh-poohed the idea, then Media Matters “thoroughly debunked the whole thing at least twice, and to be fair, Obie didn’t say it was a “mistake,” “boneheaded” or otherwise, nor did he call it a “distraction.”  He and his camp hadn’t gotten the bit down at that point, so he just said “he didn’t know.”  From the New York Times:

“At no point did I know what stocks were held,” Mr. Obama said. “And at no point did I direct how those stocks were invested.”

Good enough, Senator.  Poof! story be gone!   Many other boneheaded moves have come and gone since then; in October, Oboyhe’spresident admitted that the biggest one of all was his off-the-cuff put-down of, pretty much, white America during an April primary fundraiser in San Francisco, even though, it wasn’t really his fault.  Again, with the New York Times:

“That was my biggest boneheaded move,” Obama told me recently. We were sitting across from each other on his plane, the one with the big red, white and blue “O” on the tail, flying some 35,000 feet above Nebraska. “How it was interpreted in the press was Obama talking to a bunch of wine-sipping San Francisco liberals with an anthropological view toward white working-class voters. And I was actually making the reverse point, clumsily, which is that these voters have a right to be frustrated because they’ve been ignored. And because Democrats haven’t met them halfway on cultural issues, we’ve not been able to communicate to them effectively an economic agenda that would help broaden our coalition.”

There have been a number of significant Obuhbuh “distractions” in our shared journey to now, however, most did not need to rise to the level of “boneheaded mistakes” in order to be dismissed.  Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a “distraction,” ACORN was, too, but not visiting the troops during his whirlwind Rock Star Tour (yeah, baby) was not a mistake, but, the controversy about it was, you guessed it, another damned “distraction.”  The New Yorker’s Ray Lizza piece criticizing Obama was not a distraction, the cover was, one that benefited CampO; it served to divert attention from the story inside.  What we have all learned is that “distraction” is a dirty word, and it displeases the High and Mighty One to have to use it.  Even his wife knows better than to be one.

The right wing has long been on to Obuti’mcute’s hijinks.  Over, and over and over again they have bitched and moaned about the Boy King’s ability to rise above scandal and ineptitude with the complicity of a media corps of fellating fluffers, by merely looking down his nose at them as they observe his wonderfulness from their crotch-level POV.  And, as with any lie oft-repeated, the effects have trickled down to the rank-and-file wannabe fluffers of the blogosphere, all too eager to seek entree into the sphere of His Holiness’ orbit, if only they prove themselves worthy enough to drop to a knee without pads on a moment’s notice.

So, when the Blagodrama hit it was…a distraction.  And, when Tom Daschle realized he was becoming a dreaded “distraction” he couldn’t beat feet to the media to announce his withdrawal fast enough.  One must never, ever be a “distraction,” to do so would be “boneheaded” indeed.  For, the Obamessiah would become “pisseth.”  Only he knows when a mistake becomes “boneheaded” enough to be a “distraction” that he has to admit he “screwed up,” and when he does, he’ll look down his nose at the fluffer du jour, and, as soon as they’re done, they’ll let the rest of us know.

See the pattern, now?

Gee, How’d I Miss This?

I guess there’s “pay-to-play” and then, there’s “pay-to-play.”  But in a CNN article from January 27, it was revealed that when the president and Congress does it, it’s not “pay-to-play.”

The $825 billion stimulus bill the Obama administration is trying to push through Congress would prevent any money given to the state of Illinois from being handled by the state’s impeached governor, Rod Blagojevich.

The 647-page bill bars Illinois agencies from receiving any money unless the Legislature directs how it will be spent, or until “Rod R. Blagojevich no longer holds the office of governor of the state of Illinois.” It does allow local governments to receive money directly from Washington or through the state, if state agencies follow an established formula.

So, no stimulus money for Illinois until “Rod R. Blagojevich no longer holds the office of governor of the state of Illinois.”?!?  They had to impeach him, or the state wouldn’t get paid?  No wonder the vote was 59-0!  Obviously, the governor’s seat is more fuckin’ golden than a vacant Senate one.

Aaaannnndddd, the wheels on the bus go “wheeeee!”

Even Superman’s Under The Bus

Golly gosh, gee whiz!  Isn’t President Black Obama loyal to anybody?  While his pretty baby administration was imploding with the force of an exploding supernova’s core, he and his belle, Michelle, were entertaining a group of school aged pretty babies at a D.C. elementary school.  After doing everything but read My Pet Goat to the adorably precocious children their youngest daughter’s age, including asserting that they had escaped from the confines of the White House where they have presumably been held against their will for the last two weeks, the Obamas opened the floor for questions, obviously without screening them first, something the president rarely does in press conferences, btw.  From Breitbart:

“We got out! They let us out!” Mrs. Obama said as the kids and their teachers laughed.

edit

One child asked him if he had a favorite superhero. Spiderman and Batman, the president answered.

Batman!?  What happened to Superman?  Didn’t his dad, Jor-El, send him here to save us?  Isn’t that what he told us in October at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, when he also said his middle name was “Steve“?

Who is Barack Obama? Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father Jor El to save the planet Earth. Many of you — many of you know that I got my name, Barack, from my father. What you may not know is that Barack is actually Swahili for ‘that one’. And I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn’t think I’d ever run for President. If I had to name my greatest strength, I guess it would be my humility. Greatest weakness, it’s possible that I’m a little too awesome. One other thing, I have never, not once, put lipstick on a pig or a pit bull or myself.

Boy, you do one comic book, and suddenly you forget where you came from.

The Genius of Obama’s Magic Donor List

You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about how and why Black Obama was shoved down America’s throats and all the attendant events surrounding the Obamenom of the Obamanationization of Omerica.  I think of how he came out of nowhere with money grown on trees dripping out of his ass, beloved of all though none had yet met him, and I go, “Huh?  What the fuck is up with that?”  Then I marvel at how fortunate he is to appear black on the anniversary of so many noteworthy events in black history that might otherwise have gone unnoticed, like the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.  There’s not much doubt that were it not for the monumentousness of the historic nature of a having a candidate who appears to be black run for president, that one might have come and gone without proper deference being paid.  I mean, in normal, non-monumentally historically natured times, who the hell makes a big deal about a 45th anniversary?  So, right there, you have a reason to be thankful that there is Obama.

Then, there’s the inescapable fact that without the awe-inspiring presence of the Inspirer of Awe, black Americans like me might have continued to go about our business blissfully unaware of our longing for our collective, unspoken need to validate ourselves be fulfilled by installing a man who appears to be black in the Oval Office.  Without the Obamessiah deigning to play Joshua to Dr. King’s Moses, black Americans might still be inclined to lobby and petition the government for things previously denied, but now obviously guaranteed them, like, jobs, education opportunities, access to health care services and equal treatment under the law.  Thank God we don’t have to worry about stuff like that anymore.

Yet, the most wondrous of things to behold is the sheer genius, nay intellectual artistry, employed by the architects and engineers of Obamania.  A political campaign propelled by a new media source whose birth, growth and development mirrors the candidate, now president’s own, how lucky is that?  A campaign designed by a man as notorious for his ability to create faux grassroots support on his clients’ behalf, creating the illusion that the poison they spew is desired by teeming hordes of consumers, as he is for getting black guys elected, meets a candidate who appears to be black and whose past, failed attempts at community organizing can be exploited as a dedication to grassroots organization, are you kidding me?  Match made in Heaven my ass!  This…is…Kismet!

And, in the ultimate stroke of genius, corporate sponsors desperate for up close and personal access to power to buttress their inflated sense of self importance can be recruited as co-conspirators in this win-win good-for-everybody exercise in democracy at work by encouraging them to subvert the campaign donor laws while contributing massive amounts of cash necessary to promote the wondrous goodness of He Who Would Come To Be Known As The One to the huddled masses yearning to be seen as tolerant of black people.   By breaking up the obscene amounts of money being funneled into the campaign by corporate entities into individual employee donations, the campaign Astroturfer can not only grow the campaign donor list, he can inform the conveniently nascent alternative media sources of the wonders of perpetuating the small donor myth now afforded him by the swelled numbers of individual contributors.  In addition, the black man manipulating Astroturfer now possesses an alternate, invaluable tool for indoctrinating the gullible, since the real campaign donation sources include individual  mainstream media information disseminators among other purveyors of influence.  Thus, at any time, thousands of media and other influential employees of institutions of higher learning, government, and finance, can be directly contacted at a moment’s notice and given information, talking points and marching orders straight from the Astroturfer’s mouth.

Direct access to the validation seeking black Americans and their fellow hopeless country-men and -women desperate for change via the Bullies of the Blogosphere and the Mainstream Media Maniacs by way of the White House in 1 easy step through the courtesy of Corporate America.  Thousands of employees of Citigroup, JP Morgan, Pepsi, Time Warner, MTV, BET, Dreamworks, Microsoft, Stanford, Columbia, etc., along with the other “small donors” on the list, now get to hear straight from the Astroturfing man with the office next door to the president any time he feels like telling them something.  Now we know why Obama 2.0 wants us all to have stimulus package house parties.

Combine that with daily talking point exchanges between the White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel and two of CNN”s “Democratic strategists,” Paul Begala and James Carville, and you’ve got the country on information lockdown.

Gotta love that.

Now if I could just figure out who hired the Astroturfer in the first place…

Another One Bites The Dust (Update)

Golly gee whiz!  Ya can’t even find a law-abiding citizen to fill a made up position and you’ve only been on the job 2 weeks?   Orrrr, you’re taking crap from those silly old gun and Bible clinging bitter knitters about your second tax cheating cabinet appointment in a row, so you decide to find some chum to throw to the sharks to keep ‘em busy as you pay off your old campaign debt by trying to slide your old suck up buddy aboard your sinking ship of ethics reform while everybody’s attention is diverted elsewhere?  Well, then you must be President Black Obama!  A-yup.  Another tax cheating Obama administration appointee has emerged, but this one at least has the good sense to withdraw.  But then, she’s a woman so she probably wasn’t given a stick it out option, knowwhatumsayin‘?

An Obama administration official says Nancy Killefer is withdrawing her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government.

The official said the 55-year-old executive with consulting giant McKinsey & Co., will detail her reason for pulling out later Tuesday.

When her selection was announced by President Barack Obama on Jan. 7, The Associated Press disclosed that in 2005 the District of Columbia government had filed a more than $900 tax lien on her home for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help.

Since then, administration officials have refused to answer questions about the tax error which she resolved five months after the lien was filed.

And this guy has the nerve to question The Great and Powerful Odd’s commitment to ethics reform.  Tschuh!  Please, the Pied Piper of Politics is obviously a regular ol’ political Elliot Ness.  He is gonna need a bigger gun, though.

*UPDATE: Tom Daschle withdraws, too.  It is unclear what happens to his appointment as Director of the White House Office of Health Reform.  Can you say Howard Dean, maybe?

Trouble In ObamaLand

Poor President Black Obama.  Life as leader of the free world must be so very much different than he thought it would be back in the days when he read about it in the news and decided that gosh darnit, things needed to change.  I mean, how was he to know that getting people to give up old ways that worked fine for them all their lives would be hard, really hard, as really, really hard as George Bush found the job to be, too?  Back when Obie was conjuring up hypotheticals to challenge the young minds of privileged youth as an “all but what it lack” constitutional law professor in the cloistered confines of the Hyde Park enclave’s Ivy League equivalent, the answers had to seem so obvious.  Forget the “duh” factor involved since he was the one who made up the questions; mingling with sharks, tigers, barracudas and lions and trying to turn them into pussycats, puppies and pretty, pretty sparrows is not as easy as you might think from the comfort of your ergonomic Barcalounger.  Running smack into the “I hope you take your change and stick it where the sun don’t shine” reality of the “survival of the fittest” predatory jungle that is D.C. politics has to be a cold, cruel wake-up call to the man who dreamed ObamaLand.  Oh, well.

Looking out the window of a Rezko subsidized McMansion, the fact that lobbyists are bad, bad, bad, and the country needs clean, honest, transparent government is such an obvious no-brainer.  Don’t need a Harvard Law degree to figure that one out.  But, funny thing, that.  Not only do those stubborn lobbyists not want to give up a single iota of power and influence, (can you imagine?) everyfuckingbody is one!  And, they’re all crooks to boot!  Even people you like a lot.  I mean, sheesh!  What’s a Spokesmodel Pres to do?

Barack Obama promised a “clean break from business as usual” in Washington. It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

From the start, he made exceptions to his no-lobbyist rule. And now, embarrassing details about Cabinet-nominee Tom Daschle’s tax problems and big paychecks from special interest groups are raising new questions about the reach and sweep of the new president’s promised reforms.

Maybe he shouldn’t have promised so much, some open-government advocates say. They’re willing to cut him some slack — for now.

The delusional Associated Press is obviously in denial too, since they seem oblivious to the “if it was a snake it woulda bitcha” truth staring them in the face that slack-cutting has become a way of life for those charged with monitoring and assessing the performance of the Baby Pres-In-Training Wheels’ nascent administration.

There was slack-cutting aplenty going on when the “aahh, fuhgeddaboudit” press pass was issued to Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, via the access given Astroturfing Obacrats assigned to speak on, and off, the record excusing his “innocent” transgressions between proclamations of his stellar qualifications as worthy Obamessiah acolyte.  Snip, snip, slack abounds.  More slack was paid out in the noose line that threatened to choke the life out of the appointment of another TelePrompTer Jesus disciple, Eric Holder, approved by the bishops just today.  And Williams Lynn and Corr were snuck onto the Fisherman’s boat with slack sufficient to jump rope with, despite Lord Changey Hope’s oft-issued earlier proclamations from on high:

However, William J. Lynn III, his choice to become the No. 2 official at the Defense Department, recently lobbied for military contractor Raytheon. And William Corr, tapped as deputy secretary at Health and Human Services, lobbied through most of last year as an anti-tobacco advocate. Corr says he will take no part in tobacco matters in the new administration.

“Even the toughest rules require reasonable exceptions,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

That was a big step back from Obama’s unambiguous swipe at lobbyists in November 2007, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. “I don’t take a dime of their money,” he said, “and when I am president, they won’t find a job in my White House.”

So, now that absolution has been granted to so many other transgressors, Tax Cheat II, Tom Daschle, is almost assured forgiveness, despite the fact that he’s a liar who has had to confess to the dreaded lobbying sin, too:

For Tom Daschle, life out of the Senate has been lucrative. In addition to his work as an adviser to a Washington law firm and as chairman of the board for a private equity firm, Daschle has been paid $195,000 to give speeches to health care industry groups — the very sector President Obama has designated him to overhaul.

While it is common for former lawmakers to engage in paid speaking and lobbying, the fees Daschle received and his work as a special policy adviser to health care clients with the lobbying and law firm Alston & Bird raise fresh questions about his nomination to be Health and Human Services secretary, a selection already thrown off track by revelations that he amended his tax returns on Jan. 2 to pay the IRS roughly $140,000 in back taxes and interest.

Hey, it’s not like Little Lord Wannabe’s doing any Blago-type pay-to-play shenanigans with Senate seats, or nothin’.  Is he supposed to know that sometimes the people you appoint for all the right reasons have skeletons in their closets, like trying to abolish the very department you seek to have them head?   These things are simply not his fault!  It’s just that painting rainbows on graffiti filled alley walls is hard.

Obama IS America

John Ridley is KoolAid drunk and righteously buzzed on Hopium, dude.  The brother is on full, knowwhatumsayin’?  Looking around the blogosphere for something interesting besides predictably tired mea culpas from tax cheating cabinet appointees, or increasingly serious pay-to-play allegations that would, and have, run a politician without friends out of office, against former cabinet appointees, I found this link to a PBS commentary on Stop The ACLU.  (Toldja I was desperately seeking something.)  Anyway, if you have a strong stomach, or, if you too have a powerful all American man-crush on Brother President, (in which case you’ve either stumbled here by mistake, or are just as desperate for somebody to say or do something noteworthy as I am) take a look at this obsequiously unctuous pean to the bronze god, Obamacus Amerikos.

Trying To Follow The Money

Like a lot of bloggers, and everybody else on the planet, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the subtleties and nuances of the sledgehammer hitting us on the head that is our current global financial crisis.  What I’m finding out through countless hours of reading, mind-numbing video watching, and research is terrifying; not so much because evil entities are out to screw us all into the poor house, hell, we already knew that.  What’s enough to make you run screaming to the nearest asylum demanding the first place in line of their express self check-in, is the fact that the vast majority of the earth’s inhabitants, including those in charge, have no fucking idea what the hell they’re doing.  Don’t believe me?  Watch this:

Most of us believe that somehow the government with its Treasury Department and the Office of This and That, and Secretary of Such and Such, and the Federal Reserve Bank, and all the other robbers and crooks in the financial sector will ultimately work together to figure this thing out and save us from catastrophe somehow.  Nuh-uh.  Ain’t gonna happen.  These are the guys screwing us and each other every time we bend over to pick up the crumbs they scatter.  And they like it with no grease.

Earlier I theorized that the banking industry might have hand-picked Black Obama to do it’s bidding; in fact, given that they so heavily invested in his campaign and so many players in this whole mess are such prominent satellites in his orbit, one might even speculate that the bailed out banker boyz engineered his “historic” stage managed campaign and set off the money meltdown pyrotechnics on his behalf.  Run, go get my tinfoil hat!  They might be listening!

It’s hard not to feel a little crazy when you read newspaper article after newspaper article, blog after blog providing fact after fact that more than suggest that the suspicions you’ve held since the beginning about the strangely successful political career arc of a community organizer/school tacher cum president in six easy steps are tame.

Start with the obvious; who benefits?  Who would get the most out of a unified “bipartisan” presidency?  Where’d the money come from?  The millions a freshman senator from Chicago was able to raise after 2 years in office and a speech, where’d it come from?  Who would have that kind of money to invest, and would they throw it away on a sucker bet?  Hardly.  So, who would invest that kind of money, money that seemed to mysteriously generate itself just in the nick of time whenever it was needed?  Dazzlingly staggering amounts of money seeming to drop out the ass of a guy whose failure to get the city of Chicago to take asbestos out of a hellhole made him tuck tail and run out of town to try to learn how to get something done?  Could there be some sort of connection between those bailed out and those who we know propped the new president up?

In looking into the simple question, “who owns the Federal Reserve?” a lot of names came up of people affiliated with the Obama administration and campaign.  Coincidence?  Maybe, but, I’m not sure there’s that much coincidence in the world.  And given all the hide-in-plain-sight realities of the Fed’s interesting history and practices, conspiracy theories don’t seem quite so far-fetched.  That so many questionable situations would converge around one man at one point in time is astonishing, and bears investigation.  I suggest, as many of my commenters have, starting with Logistic Monster’s Fed page, there’s a lot of stuff there, not necessarily connected to Obama, but, conclusions are for each person to draw for themselves.  Another site provided by Daily Puma’s Alessandro Machi is worth a look.   I provided a few Fed related links in my earlier post, and would appreciate readers’ input after following them.  There’s something here, folks, and I’m not sure I can find it all by myself.   But questions about where Obamania came from, who’s behind the sudden orchestrated rise of an obscure politician, and what, if anything, it all has to do with how the world we live in turns out, shouldn’t be swept under the rug just because he’s president now.  We need to keep looking at all sides, everything we can get our hands on, pro and con, and figure out the truth.  If there is something there, letting bygones be bygones is what the culprits are betting on.  Hell, if it turns out just to be a tin foil hat party, so be it.  At least it’s not an Obama 2.0 stimulus house party scam sham.

And, just to give you an idea of what kind of juicy tidbits are floating around in cyberspace just ripe for the pickin’ after some good huntin’, here’s a nugget from an August 8, article about what Obama’s corporate backers might want in return.  All the usual suspects, JP Morgan Chase, USB AG, Google, etc., are there, but National Amusements?

What could a theatre chain want from a potential Obama administration that could inspire over $350,000 in donations? Don’t be misled. National Amusements has long been media mogul Sumner Redstone’s vehicle of choice when making campaign contributions. Through the company Redstone owns controlling interests CBS, Viacom (which owns MTV, BET), Paramount Pictures, and Dreamworks. Look for National Amusements to ask for looser regulations from the FCC regarding television ownership that prohibits cable television stations from also owning broadcast stations in the same market. Beyond the six figure donation, Redstone can donate “in-kind” with favorable press to the Obama campaign – look for the media maven to ride out his agenda to the fullest extent possible.

Huh.  Amazing what you can find on the internet nowadays, ain’t it?

Citigroup’s Novel Diversity Program

Why’d Citigroup send six black Congresspeople to the Caribbean just after the bailout?  To tan, maybe?  Are they really this stupid, or is the media just good at burying stories like this one from November, reported 3 days ago?  From Yahoo News:

Today the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) asked Neil M. Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), for a formal review of the sponsorship by Citigroup of a junket to the Caribbean by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) and five other members of Congress, a trip that violated House Rules.

The request comes in the wake of Citigroup’s decision to scrap the purchase of a $50 million executive jet, and continuing questions about Citigroup’s management.

The purported purpose of the Congressional trip was to attend the Caribbean Multi-Cultural Business Conference. The event took place November 6-9, 2008 on the sunny Caribbean island of St. Maarten at the Sonesta Maho Bay Resort & Casino, after Congress had approved the $700 billion bailout package in October.

Now, I’m sure St. Maarten is lovely in November, and Lord knows, I’ve got no problem with black people partying on the beach, but come on.  Doesn’t anybody, anywhere have enough sense to say, “uh, guys, maybe this isn’t a good idea right now”?  Even if you usually take all 41 members of the Congressional Black Caucus with you everywhere you go, shouldn’t you be able to figure out that breaking tradition, just this once, might be in everybody’s best interest?  Duh.  And didn’t the white guy with the camera taking pictures of all the politicians stand out just a little bit?

NLPC President Peter Flaherty attended the St. Maarten’s event in order to document potential violations of law and House Rules. The sessions were lightly attended. The primary purpose of attending for most participants appeared to be to take a vacation.

So, in case you were wondering where the TARP money went, wonder no more.  They were sending some of the president’s homies to check up on his “financial director”/girlfriend Vera Baker in the area.  Makes as much sense as anything else.

Barack’s Bipartisan Bullspit and Banks

Ever have two distinct and separate ideas rolling around in your head suddenly come together with the force of an electron smashing an atom in a particle accelerator?  Probably not; it was a stupid analogy.  Bear with me, I’ll try to explain where I’m coming from.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why a president with an almost filibuster-proof majority would be so determined to be perceived as “bipartisan” that he would make unnecessary concessions in his stimulus package to the detriment of his own party’s constituents and at the expense of his party’s principles.  That’s about as dumb as giving your house to a homeless guy so poor people will like you.   It really makes no sense in light of the fact that the president in question is not above engaging in the political equivalent of NFL end zone booty shaking victory dance taunting, “I won!  You lose!  Suck off, punktards!”  Which brings me to the second part of my quandary.  Why is the country broke in the first place?  Are the two realities related?

In perusing one of my favorite PUMA sites, PUMA Pac, I came across a comment about the Federal Reserve Bank, which asserted that it was a private institution owned by powerful banking families, not the government.  That seemed a bit far-fetched to me, so I did a little research.  I Googled, “Who owns the Federal Reserve?”  Turns out that the truth is pretty  complicated.  The Fed is not exactly federal or private, neither fish nor fowl, though a little bit of both.  From the Federal Reserve Bank’s FAQ web page:

The Federal Reserve System is not “owned” by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.

As the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve derives its authority from the U.S. Congress. It is considered an independent central bank because its decisions do not have to be ratified by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branch of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms. However, the Federal Reserve is subject to oversight by Congress, which periodically reviews its activities and can alter its responsibilities by statute. Also, the Federal Reserve must work within the framework of the overall objectives of economic and financial policy established by the government. Therefore, the Federal Reserve can be more accurately described as “independent within the government.”

Huh?  The president selects the deliberately designed to be non-partisan  Board of Governors of the Fed, but has no authority over it.  It is also not part of the Treasury, though it is supposed to work in tandem with it.  From Investopedia:

The Department of the Treasury and Federal Reserve work together in an effort to maintain a stable economy. The Federal Reserve serves as the government’s banker, processing transactions, such as accepting electronic payments for Social Security taxes, issuing payroll checks to government employees and clearing checks for tax payments and other government receivables.

The Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury also work together to borrow money when the government needs to raise cash. The Federal Reserve issues U.S. Treasury securities and conducts Treasury securities auctions, selling these securities on behalf of the Department of the Treasury. Examples of Treasury securities include:

• Treasury bonds
• Treasury bills
• Treasury notes
• Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS)

The Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury are also linked in another way. The Federal Reserve is a nonprofit company. After their expenses are paid, any remaining profits are paid to the Department of the Treasury. The Department of the Treasury then uses that money to fund government spending. It’s a relationship that produces a considerable amount of money. The Federal Reserve System contributed in excess of $29 billion to the Treasury in 2006, according to the Federal Reserve Board (FRB). So, the Federal Reserve not only helps to make and implement policies, it also serves as the government’s bank and generates a portion of the revenue used to fund the country’s activities.

Now, what does all this have to do with Barack Obama?  Well, we know he has appointed Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, to the position of Secretary of the Treasury, ostensibly because he’s the only guy qualified to get us out of our current dire economic straits.  We also know that Geithner comes to us directly from the New York Fed, one of 12 Federal banks which comprise the Fed.  From Wikipedia:

There are 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks (not to be confused with the “member banks”) with 25 branches, which serve as the operating arms of the system. Each Federal Reserve Bank is subject to oversight by a Board of Governors.^[42] Each Federal Reserve Bank has a board of directors, whose members work closely with their Reserve Bank president to provide grassroots economic information and input on management and monetary policy decisions. These boards are drawn from the general public and the banking community and oversee the activities of the organization. They also appoint the presidents of the Reserve Banks, subject to the approval of the Board of Governors. Reserve Bank boards consist of nine members: six serving as representatives of nonbanking enterprises and the public (nonbankers) and three as representatives of banking. Each Federal Reserve branch office has its own board of directors, composed of three to seven members, that provides vital information concerning the regional economy.

The current board of the New York Fed includes Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, Indra Nooyi of Pepsi, Leo Bollinger, Columbia University, and Dennis Hughes, AFL-CIO.  Dimon and Nooyi are advisers to President Barack Obama, and have been throughout his campaign.  Pepsi has launched a “Refresh Everything” ad campaign tied into the new administration’s “hopey-changey” philosophy, and JP Morgan has benefited from the acquisition of Bear Stearns with assistance from the Fed.

I’m no economist by a long shot, and I admit I have no real idea what it all means when I read that the Fed and the Treasury have also “bailed out” AIG, or that the Treasury has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  But, when the president is hinting at big doings a-coming from Geithner in the near future, my ears perk up, all things considered:

“Soon my Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, will announce a new strategy for reviving our financial system that gets credit flowing to businesses and families,” Obama said. He didn’t provide specifics.

“We’ll help lower mortgage costs and extend loans to small businesses so they can create jobs,” Obama said. “We’ll ensure that CEOs are not draining funds that should be advancing our recovery.”

Now, a lot of info comes from suspect places, so I tried to find independent corroboration wherever possible.  And, while there’s a lot to process that requires somebody with a lot more expertise than I possess to properly assess, when I look at all this stuff, something seems fishy.  Like the fact that the New York Fed, which seems to be the lead bank of the 12, and according to Wikipedia implements policy decided in Washington, lists the “primary dealers” of the Federal Reserve as including some of Barack Obama’s largest donors.  Wikipedia’s list of primary dealers includes Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS.  Barack Obama’s biggest donors list, according to Open Secrets, includes Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, UBS, the United States Government, and Columbia University.

Now, like I said, I don’t really know what all of this means, but maybe bipartisan participation leading to a sort of UniParty is just what the bankers ordered.  Maybe that’s what the real “change” is all about.  I suggest everybody look into the Federal Reserve question, I’d love to discuss this with anybody who’s interested.  How all this works together to bring us to this point, with this president, deserves closer scrutiny, in my very humble opinion.