If you are following the Sestak bribe and White House coverup . . .

This timeline of events comes from Doug Ross @ Journal. Says Ross, "The contradictions between Congressman Joe Sestak's account of a job offer and the belated, official White House response are, in a word, stunning. The controversy isn't dying down and it won't be going away. In fact, I suspect it has only just begun."

The timeline is here.

This reminds me of Watergate--drip, drip, drip. It would just never go away.

We Remember

"He Was Supposed to Be Competent"

That's the headline of Peggy Noonan's current op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. Earth to Peggy: He was supposed to be competent according to whom? What in God's name in his background led you and people like you to believe that he would be a "competent" president? HE HAD NO EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE! Your idiot white guilt vote, yours and people like you, have this country in one big ass mess.

Noonan's strongest point is this: Obama attempted to dodge the responsibility for the oil spill, putting it off onto British Petroleum, not the federal government. "When you try to dodge ownership of a problem, when you try to hide from responsibility, life will give you ownership and responsibility the hard way." Oh, and this is something new, Noonan? Are you just now waking up to Obama's pattern of voting present? You're a journalist? Really?

Noonan continues: The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration, and that is no cause for joy. It's not good to have a president in this position—weakened, polarizing and lacking broad public support—less than halfway through his term. That it is his fault is no comfort. It is not good for the stability of the world, or its safety, that the leader of "the indispensable nation" be so weakened. I never until the past 10 years understood the almost moral imperative that an American president maintain a high standing in the eyes of his countrymen.

Governing is a bitch, isn't it Barry? This is the same guy who branded Bush's handling of Katrina as "unconscionable incompetence." Of course Obama was going to be different. He was going to bring us Hope and Change and a New Day of transparency in Washington politics. One wag is calling Obama's approach to the oil spill "that of the law student suddenly fascinated by a science project." His news conference was labeled "sixty minutes of soporific verbosity."

Increasingly, Obama's handling of the Gulf oil spill is being likened to his administration's "Katrina moment."

Here's Karl Rove in the WSJ: "Yes, the Gulf Spill Is Obama's Katrina."

Here's Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post: "A disaster with many fathers."

Here's Frank Rich in The New York Times: "Obama's Katrina? Maybe Worse."

Here's Craig Crawford at CQ Politics: "Obama's Katrina."

Here's C. Edmund Wright at American Thinker: "When Professor Obama Meets Dirty Reality."

And one of my favorite blogs, Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog, asks the question, as Obama and family skip off to Chicago for the Memorial Day weekend: "Are we having fun yet?"

Update #1. So evidently we have some leftist progressive blogger to thank for writing, No, the Gulf oil spill isn't Obama's Katrina; instead, it's his Iran Hostage Crisis. Wow! How exactly right is that one? Those who lived through it will never forget Nightline counting down the days, every single day. This crisis killed Jimmy Carter and his presidency, and as sorry as I am that the oil spill is happening, I'm with Rahm Emanuel on this one--"Never let a good crisis go to waste." I hope that this will do for Obama what Jimmah's hostage crisis did for him.

"President Dawdle, examing every nuance, forming commissions, weighing the impact of politics, and demanding to have the luxury to be right at the expense of being effective, to the detriment of us all."--"The Gulf Disaster: Obama's Hostage Crisis," by Leftcoast on "Best of the Blogs."

Here's an excellent piece written Pete Wehner, columnist for Politics Daily: "Obama, the Thin-Skinned President." Barry has a real problem with criticism, something David Axelrod warned Obama about in a memo, "something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism." That's what the entitlement attitude of affirmative action will do for you.

Wehner continues, "What explains all this is hard to know. But it's clear he has adopted an image of himself as something rare and remarkable, a historic figure of almost super-human abilities." If people understood better what makes a toxic narcissist tick, then this sort of twisted self-image would come as no surprise.

The next to the last paragraph is choice: And so the president needs to surround himself with people who can tamp down on the uglier impulses within his administration, who are willing to tell Obama that the lore created by him, Axelrod, Plouffe, and Gibbs during the campaign has given way to reality, that cockiness is not the same as wisdom, and that spin is no substitute for substantive achievements. And Obama needs someone who has standing in his life to tell him that the presidency is a revered institution that should not be treated as if it were a ward in Chicago.

There is no way Obama is going to change who he is--he literally can't, since as a narcissist, he honestly believes he is right--always. We're in for some hard times until we can get this guy out of the White House.

May we "never again" put such an inexperienced, incompetent buffoon in the Office of the President of the United States.

Update. I guess a good time was had by all on their Chicago vacation. Seriously, is Lady Michelle-O wearing a thong? That thing is giving her one massive wedgie. Ouch. She may be working on getting the kids of America to "move" ("No Child's Fat Behind"), but maybe she ought to take a rear-view look in the mirror once in awhile. She seems to have a real issue with wearing clothes that don't fit her body--teeny, tiny sweaters, boob belts, whale bone corset formal dresses. Now pants that fit her two (three?) sizes ago (that would be about 40 pounds, for those who are wondering). For someone who has a staff of 47 to help her out, you'd think someone would be around to tell her about the rear view. Too much Chicago deep-dish pizza, is my guess--"Good for me, but not for thee."

And what's with Barry's rumpled suit? I guess the rain did them all in. Is Obama getting thinner? It looks like Lady Michell-O is eating for both of them. Shades of Steve King's (Bachman) book, Thinner. Heh.

Still officially my favorite blog of all time, Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog, where the above (and below) pics are from. Good for a laugh, every single time.

A commenter at Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog said that dressing like a slob is Lady Michelle-O's way of giving this country (of which she was nevah proud, by the way) the finger. Oh. My. Eyes. If she's gonna wear her hair in that skanky little knob, she could at least put on a hat.

Headline at Fox News:
"Obama to Appear in Rare Press Conference"

The Fox schedule says that Barack Obama will "confront the White House press corps (corpse) in a full-blown news conference" today, for the first time in 308 days. I can't find a time for this thing yet. You would think, knowing the way this guy likes to hear himself talk, that he would be having these things all the time. Before the election, he mused that he might hold "once a month" press conferences. It's turned out so far to be closer to once a year. What he's done in the past is to take a question and then pontificate at length--like 20 minutes--so that in a 45-minute press conference, he might get in three or four questions. I wouldn't expect today to be any different. He doesn't seem to be able to stop himself from "answering long."

In an opinion piece, the Washington Post says Obama must do "four things" today at his press conference:

1. He should expound a little bit on his "Plug the damn hole" remark over the inability to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico (oh--that's "Ocean" of Mexico, according to Janet Napolitano).

2. He should "try his best" to show that sending 1,200 National Guard troops to the border is being done for a better reason than just to get "cranky Sen John McCain" to shut up.

3. He needs to clear the air about the Joe Sestak affair. Which will become the Obama Watergate affair if he doesn't.

4. (And I'll quote this one, since it's only a little bit bizarre)--"And he needs to exercise rhetorical presidential muscle to tamp down the uprising among service section chiefs over 'don't ask, don't tell.'"

Well, good luck with all of that. Although I would add that mainly he needs to watch himself and not speak "stupidly" like he did in his last (July 2009) press conference. Even better luck with that one, Champ.

Update. I had heard that this was going to be a regular press conference. That's what I heard a couple of days ago. I can't find anything about this on Drudge. So I went over to HuffPo, and the headline there reads, "Obama Oil Spill Speech: President to Take Questions, Cite Report, on Gulf Oil Spill." So has this "press conference" now morphed into something entirely different?? It would seem so.

I finally found a time for this thing (not exactly prime time, but that's OK since it's coming from the Not-Yet-Ready-for-Prime-Time-President). This is according to the Fox New White House Blog: 12:45 Eastern time, "President Obama delivers remarks and takes questions from the press in the White House East Room."

Update #2: There were some "golden moments" at this presser. HotAir has them. Just look for clips with that gold drapery background. Ick. Those gold drapes remind me of something you would see in King Hassad's palace. You can't argue taste, I guess. He took eight questions. Six of them were about the oil spill. Hey, journalists, someone want to ask the guy about North Korea? Mr. Obama looked pretty bad today--the eyes. He's also dying his hair again.

Update #3. Here's the Open Thread for comments about the presser on Hot Air.

Update #4. Michelle Malkin has an excellent analysis of Obama's presser: "Obama sleeps while oil spills."

Will the Sestak Bribe Offer Be Obama's Watergate?

"Stonewalling" is a word that anyone who lived through the Nixon Watergate era is very familiar with. Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) acknowledged as far back as last February that he was offered a job by an unnamed White House official if he would drop out of the Senate race against Arlen Specter--an offer which would be a felony and could lead to impeachment, depending on "what Obama knew and when he knew it."

White House mouthpiece Bob Gibbs has been doing his usual snarky job of non-answer answering on this question. Here's a compilation of his answers up to the end of last month, which consist mainly of telling reporters for weeks that he would "look into" the matter and then finally saying "I'm told that whatever conversations have been had are not problematic." Right, Bob. Whatever you say. [By the way, is this maroon ever going to quit wearing pink ties? I've told him before that they make his face look even hammier than normal. But I digress.]

Then there's the recent statements from ObamaTeam's stonewaller-in-chief, David Axelrod. Let's see, did he call Sestak a liar? What he said was that there is "no evidence" that White House officials tried to keep Sestak out of the race by offering him a high-ranking government job. "When the allegations were made, they were looked into," said Axelrod in his best passive-voice construction. "And there was no evidence of such a thing." You can bet your ass there's "no evidence"--no one is ever going to find Oval Office tapes of conversations in Obama's White House like they did in Nixon's. That's a very clever parsing of words there, David. But . . . then didn't he just call Joe Sestak a liar? And who is Joe Sestak, anyway? Well, for starters he was a member of the United States Navy for over 30 years. Oh--and he was also a three-star Vice Admiral and the highest ranking former military officer currently serving in Congress. Huh. Joe, do you not know how to play the game? You're not supposed to tell the truth about this stuff.

When asked on NBC's Meet the Depressed last Sunday if he was offered a job to get out of the race, Sestak answered the question this way: "I learned, as I mentioned, about that personal accountability in the Navy . . . . I was offered a job, and I answered that. Anything that goes beyond that is for others to talk about."

Well, I'm not sure his answer really meets a very high "personal accountability" standard, but going on from there, "others" are talking about this. Several GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee recently sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, demanding an investigation into whether or not the bribe offer violated Federal law. Signers of the letter: Republican Senators Jeff Sessions, Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham, Tom Coburn, Chuck Grassley, John Cornyn, and Orrin Hatch.

So far, ObamaTeam is refusing to provide more details--"Move along, nothing to see here." As I recall, Nixon's White House did the same thing--for a long time. Watergate for the longest time didn't seem like it was going to go anywhere. We'll keep an eye on this and see how it shakes out. I'm not terribly hopeful, however. These are Democrats, remember--double standard, and all that. There will be no Woodward and Bernstein on this story.

Except . . . here's the Los Angeles Times, no less, admitting that this story has legs. Really. The headline--"Karl Rove: Joe Sestak's lying or he's protecting a felon in Barack Obama's White House." The LA Times says, "The public and the media are not buying the White House's self-cleansing, self-serving explanation that everything was appropriate, just move along."

Here's the LA newspaper (does anyone still read it, though?) quoting Karl Rove: "One of two things is true, you can't have two things true. Either Joe Sestak is lying and he was not offered a position in the administration in return for getting out of the primary. You know he's a liar, in which case not worthy of public service. Or, he's telling the truth, in which case somebody inside the White House committed a felony. 18usc211 says that a government official cannot promise a job in return for anything of value, and it has a long list of values." Says Rove, in his "characteristically blunt" way: "Either you're a liar, Joe Sestak, or you're protecting a felon." Oops. That could be a problem.

Update on SEIU Mob Targeting Private Citizen

From Mike Flynn at Big Government: last week SEIU staged a protest at the home of an attorney for Bank of America. On a quiet Sunday in the Maryland suburbs of DC, SEIU sent 500 protesters onto the front lawn of the home of Greg Baer, a former Treasury official in the Clinton Administration. Mr. Baer wasn’t at home but, unfortunately, his 14 year old son was. The protesters succeeded in terrorizing the boy.

This Capt. Paul Stark from the Montgomery City Police Dept., being interviewed by Megyn Kelly, is one unbelievable mess. There's a whole lot of CYA going on here, plus it sounds like, the way this guy is talking, that the cops are in SEIU's back pocket--apparently the union owns this guy.



Capt. Stark says that nothing was done about this mob because they were "peacefully dispersing" by the time the police got there. Seriously?

Mike Flynn continues: the Maryland police official says, contrary to other statements made by his department, that they were immediately notified by DC police that the protesters were entering their jurisdiction. According to the official, Maryland police met with DC police at the border to get a situation report and then proceeded to the protest. When they arrived, the official claims, the protesters were already dispersing.

Remember that the official says that the site of the protest is “one or two blocks from the DC border.” Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot…

Fourteen buses start crossing the Maryland border (at which point we’re supposed to believe the Maryland police were immediately notified), they find parking on residential streets, unload their protesters, assemble 500 people on a private lawn, engage in threatening verbal abuse long enough to force a 14 year old boy to lock himself into a bathroom…and the Maryland police get there as they are dispersing? Is their police headquarters in Delaware? . . . They get a ’situation report’ that 500 protesters are targeting a private citizen’s home and they send 3 police officers? Really? They could only spare 3 officers on a Sunday in Montgomery County?

This whole thing stinks to high heaven.

Update on the update. Nina Easton, who lives across the street from the bank executive and who reported on this mob, is now being targeted by SEIU. The union is accusing Easton of being guilty of lies and distortion in reporting on the mob and also saying that her husband has ties to Bank of America--thus the "hit piece" by Easton. She says no such ties exist. Megyn Kelly's interview with her is here at HotAir. Links to Easton's Fortune article and the vitriol about her from the hacks at the Huffington Post and Media Matters are in this article at Big Journalism: "Behold the World the Left Has Made--Nina Easton On Fox."

I'd say that instead of paying their property taxes for "police protection," people in that Maryland neighborhood should pool their resources and pay for their own private protection.

How Low Can He Go?

The lowest yet. Rasmussen reports that enthusiasm among Democrats for this tool has faded (OK, so "tool" is my editorial comment, not Rasmussen's).

Extreme Irony of Daniel Pearlman Press Feedom Act Not Lost on (Some) Reporters

On May 17, Obama signed this "press freedom" act. Here are a few of Obama's remarks: What this act does is it sends a strong message from the United States government and from the State Department that we are paying attention to how other governments are operating when it comes to the press. It has the State Department each year chronicling how press freedom is operating as one component of our human rights assessment, but it also looks at countries that are -- governments that are specifically condoning or facilitating this kind of press repression, singles them out and subjects them to the gaze of world opinion in ways that I think are extraordinarily important.

OK, so is this bill just another David Axelrod / Barack Obama joke on the American people? This must really have had them snickering up their sleeves.

Barack Hussein Obama, he of the most open and transparent administration evah, hasn't had a press conference since July 22, 2009. That's 307 days. Those who defend him would say that he answers lots of questions from reporters--just not in the traditional news conference setting. Right. He's done many one-on-one interviews, mostly with completely sycophantic "reporters"--a venue which he can control. One-on-ones aren't press conferences. The reason he stays away from unscripted events is because he can't go off the teleprompter without making a buffoon of himself--and his handlers know that. But BushChimpy was so stuuuupid. Right.

After Obama signed the press freedom bill, Chip Reid of CBS News asked the president if he still has confidence in BP in the wake of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama ignored the question. Reid tried again: "In the interest of press freedom, would you take a couple of questions on BP?"

Obama: "You're certainly free to ask them, Chip."

Reporter: "Will you answer them? How about a question on Iran?

Obama: "This isn't a press conference today, but we'll be seeing you guys during the course of this week. OK?"

Reid said he asked the question, knowing Obama wouldn't answer him, "because the irony was just too rich to ignore."

Of course, if you go to the White House website to view the signing of this bill, the exchange between Obama and the reporter has been edited out.

Some of these leftist so-called "journalists" are actually starting to wake up to the fact that Obama holds them in complete disdain--despite their sycophancy. Even Chuck-y Todd, NBC's White House correspondent, acknowledges the lack of access to Obama: "Obama himself is the one who doesn't like dealing with the press. You can't even do shouted questions." For the love of God--says who? Imagine the press saying that about any other president.

Although I guess most reporters have decided not to waste their breath with "shout out" questions to Obama. Here's the result of one recent attempt last week.



Why does Obama ignore the press? Says Byron York, Because he can. Hey, Jurassic Journalists--you created this monster. Now what are you going to do about it?

Rasmussen Obama Disapproval Index for May 25, 2010

According to Rasmussen, Obama's "approval" rating with the American people has hit a new low: -20. Way to go, champ. And Rasmussen says that, at least for the moment, these downward numbers aren't reflecting his handling of the Gulf spill. So I guess that means that if people finally catch on to the abysmal job that ObamaTeam has been doing with the Gulf oil spill, then Barry's numbers may go even lower. Huh.

Update. Just as a comparison, President George H.W. Bush had nearly three press conferences a month. Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson averaged about two a month. Ronald Reagan had less than one every two months. Richard Nixon averaged one every seven weeks.

This quote is from Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post: “The White House has to use the covert threat of a cutoff in White House access for networks that refuse to play ball. The alphabet networks all know that the Obama White House has largely frozen Fox’s access to administration officials. They know that Obama grants his friends access while cutting off his enemies. This endangers the independence of the press in a catastrophic way . . . .With Obama openly pressuring the networks to accede to its requests or face a reportorial cutoff, we are witnessing the hijacking of the First Amendment in toto.”

Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act

This is WSJ journalist Daniel Pearl, shown with a gun held to his head, 26 Jan 2006. We all know he was later beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Pakistan and his snuff video was made available for all the world to see. Daniel Pearl's last words to the world: "I am Jewish."

And here are Barack Obama's words to the world about Daniel Pearl: "Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world's imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is."

"Captured the world's imagination"? That's the best the Greatest White House Orator evah could do?

Here's an excellent article by Mark Steyn: "Obama's Lazy Tribute to Daniel Pearl."

Now Obama's off the prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he's talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to see. Furthermore, the deceased's family is standing all around him. And, even for a busy president, it's the work of moments to come up with a sentence that would be respectful, moving and true. Indeed, for Obama, it's the work of seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.

But what did the "loss" of Daniel Pearl mean? Well, says the president, it was "one of those moments that captured the world's imagination." Really? Evidently it never captured Obama's imagination because, if it had, he could never have uttered anything so fatuous. He seems literally unable to imagine Pearl's fate, and so, cruising on autopilot, he reaches for the all-purpose bromides of therapeutic sedation: "one of those moments" – you know, like Princess Di's wedding, Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, whatever – "that captured the world's imagination."

The entire article is a worthwhile read.

McClintock to Calderon: "Highly Inappropriate"

Mexican President Felipe Calderon addressed a joint session of Congress last Thursday, bashing Arizona's immigration law that clamps down on illegal immigrants. Said Calderon, "It's a law that not only ignores reality, but also introduces racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement."

Naturally there was the usual seal-clapping from Nancy Pelosi and her crew, with the Dimocrats in the room giving Calderon a standing-O. This would all be hilarious if it weren't so serious for the people on the unprotected U.S. border. Here's the transcript of a recent interview with Calderon by Wolf Blitzer:

Blitzer: "So if people want to come from Guatemala or Honduras or El Salvador or Nicaragua, they want to just come into Mexico, can they just walk in?"

Calderon: "No! The need to fulfill a form. They need to establish their right name. We analyze if they have not a criminal precedence."

Blitzer: "Do Mexican police go around asking for papers of people they suspect are illegal immigrants?"

Calderon: "Of course! Of course!" Then he goes on to say that if someone "sneaks in without permission," then "we send--we send them back."

But Calderon, at the invitation of Barack Obama, comes to this country and addresses a joint session of Congress, blaming the United States for all the problems in Mexico, telling us we shouldn't enforce our own laws, lecturing Arizona for trying to keep their own borders safe. And the Dims stand and applaud. Shame.

This is Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) giving his reply on the House floor to Calderon. He quotes Teddy Roosevelt on the need for controlled immigration and assimilation, and the American tradition of welcoming immigrants who want to become Americans.



And here's Mark Levin reading from the Mexican constitution. Not to be missed.

Let 'Em Eat Cake: "Club 1600" Glams It Up

This was the most recent White House "event," the state dinner for Mexican President Calderone. I'll just quote Bryon York at the Washington Examiner:

At a time when the unemployment rate stands at 9.9 percent, when jobs are still being lost, when worries about the global economy are causing breathtaking volatility on Wall Street, when millions of Americans who still have jobs are worrying more than ever about the safety of their retirement savings — at a time when all that is going on, the Obama White House has turned itself into a showcase of glitzy extravagance.

More wagyu beef, of course, with Lady Michelle-O's favorite chef flown in from Chicago. What, the White House chefs aren't good enough? Be-yonce entertained in the "tent" set up on the White House lawn. Then the action moved to a "luxury marquee" on the South Lawn two-thirds the size of a football field, decked out with an elaborate black decor and nightclub-style lighting, featuring Monarch butterflies dangling from the ceiling.

Back to Byron York: Americans are enduring lots of hardships, and lots of anxieties to go with them. Is transforming the White House into a glam nightclub the best message for Barack and Michelle Obama to send to a suffering and nervous nation?

Lady Michelle-O: I wonder if that dress was as painful to wear as it looks? I'd rather have a mammogram than wear that thing. Anyone so underendowed on top should should know better than to wear a dress like that.

Does the White House photographer laugh or cry at all these Mussolini photo-poses from Obama? These people are really having some fun, aren't they?

The guests boarded trolleys at the South Portico entrance to the White House, en route to the State Dinner reception in a tent on the South Lawn. Trolleys? For real?

Laura Bush, we miss your class.

Totally Brilliant: Arizona Governor mocks Obama administration for not reading the immigration bill

This is via one of my favorite conservative blogs, Gateway Pundit. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has released this campaign ad, openly mocking officials in the Obama administration for not reading the 16-page bill before going out in public and making asses of themselves and criticizing it.



P.S. 71% of Arizona voters now favor the new immigration law.

For the Love of God, What Is Happening to Our Country?

This is a photo of a group of SEIU "protestors" (how about "mob of terrorists"--if it was my home, I know which word I would use) who were outside the private home of Greg Baer, deputy general counsel for corporate law at Bank of America.

Nina Easton reports at Fortune Magazine that 14 busloads of hopped-up, screaming, placard-waving "strangers"--her word--(the number estimated to be 500), on a mission to intimidate this private citizen "protested" outside of this man's house. They were on his lawn and his porch with bullhorns.

Baer's son was home alone and locked himself in the bathroom. His father, coming home to rescue his son, said, "Excuse me, "I need to get into the house. I have a child who is alone in there and frightened."

This was a mob--straight up. And what did the police do? Nothing. Easton says a "trio of officers who belatedly answered our calls confessed a fear that arrests might 'incite' these trespassers." For the Love of God. If you look at the video on YouTube (where they've disabled the ability to embed the video), you'll see what a loud and angry mob this was--camped out on this man's front porch. The link to the video can be found at the Big Government site, below.

Shame. Words absolutely fail me, except to say that law enforcement had better get a handle on this kind of thing, because reasonable people are simply not going to stand by and watch these SEIU thugs have their way with people.

Read more about this at Big Government, a post by Liberty Chick: "SEIU Storms Private Residence, Terrorizes Teenage Son of Bank of Americ Exec."

Update. Here's an excellent post from Doctor Zero at Hot Air: "The feral vanguard."  A quote from Doctor Zero's article: "American labor unions, and angry Greek pensioners, have become de facto arms of the State. They are the feral vanguard of a collapsing system, using violence and intimidation to make it clear those not favorably connected to the political power structure will be sacrificed to preserve it, for as long as possible."

Update #2. Big Journalism, posted by Archy Cary, has an in-depth report about what was going on with the police when this 500-person mob was outside of Greg Baer's house.

Here's how the article sums up what happened. For details, hit the link. "A caravan of SEIU buses receive a Metropolitan (D.C.) Police Department escort to a private home in Maryland where the protesters, from all appearances, violate Montgomery County law by engaging in a stationary protest. The Montgomery County police were not informed by their cross-jurisdictional colleagues of the impending, unusually large protest pending in their jurisdiction. . . . Had the mob decided to torch the house, the D.C. police would not have been authorized to intervene. Not their jurisdiction.

I just have one question: Why in God's name were the D.C. police escorting 14 BUSLOADS of angry people to a private citizen's home for a protest? Can someone explain that one to me?

Update. There's a whole lot of CYA going on from the D.C. Metro Police. Big Journalism has a continuing report.

Rasmussen Obama Disapproval Index

Way to go, champ. What's happening? The number of people who "strongly approve" is dropping like a hot rock. Rasmussen says this number matches the lowest rating for Obama since the passage of his health crap bill two months ago. Let's watch it drop to about a -30.

Attorney General Eric Holder Beclowns Himself
in Front of Congress

One of my favorite conservative blogger sites, Missourah.com, has a couple of stories about Eric Holder's recent testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee. This man is an embarrassment and a disgrace to his office. He went to law school? Really?

He didn't read the Arizona law? Really? The law is 10 pages long. He said he's waiting to be "briefed." Yet he was all over the Sunday news shows with his "concerns" about the unconstitutionality of the law. WTF?

I DIDN'T READ IT. I HAVEN'T BEEN BRIEFED. THE DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK. Evidently, in whatever affirmative action world this guy came from, excuses like these were not a problem. I'm sorry for this guy that the expectations for him throughout his career, both in school and in whatever law experience he might have had during whatever lameass "law career" he's had, were so low that he now thinks an excuse like, "I didn't read it" is somehow acceptable. But we don't need an Attorney General of the United States who we need to feel sorry for. We need one who is capable of doing the job.

If anyone ever wondered if affirmative action might be a problem somewhere down the road--well, here you go.

The New Fashion Forward Supremes

Thanks to Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog for giving me a much-needed laugh. I am so sick of this first woman Supreme Court Justice, second woman Supreme Court Justice, third woman Supreme Court Justice, fourth woman Supreme Court Justice. For the love of God--haven't we gotten beyond this sort of crap yet?

"One of these things is not like the other . . ."

Hopefully Kagen will soon be getting some fashion advice from her colleagues. Or alternately, depending on your "orientation," this from Ann Coulter: "Ruth Bader Ginsburg will no longer be known as the 'pretty one.'"

Update. Allahpundit on HotAir asks, "Is the Kagan battle a battle worth fighting? Or in the words of Evan Bayh, isn't it just "sad kabuki theater"?

Honestly, I don't think it is worth the fight. She's going to be confirmed. She has no paper trail to speak of. It's not going to change the makeup of the court. What's the point?

Update #2. Doctor Zero, whose stuff shows up now and then at HotAir and whom I really respect, says that Republicans should push back against Kagan even though it's not likely that she won't be confirmed. Push back because "[s]he isn't a very good nominee. Was there no one with a more impressive resume, and a greater volume of published work, who could be nominated?" the Doctor asks. See the entire post here, "Opposing Kagan"--excellent read.

Obama's Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Amateur hour at the White House continues: the Gulf oil spill disaster, the 500-year flood in Tennessee, the attack on Times Square. Let's also add Obama's abysmal, mocking "leadership" on the Arizona immigration law. If George W had ever had a week like the one The One had, the press would have drawn and quartered him. There's no doubt that Barack Obama is being largely sheltered by the lamestream press. I should be used to by now the hypocrisy of the press coverage for leftist vs. right politicians, particularly presidents, but I can't help but find the difference in the coverage of the two men insulting and disheartening.



It took Obama twelve days finally to visit the oil slick disaster zone. The New York Times reported that Obama's Homeland Security Sec'y Janet Napolitano wasn't aware that the Defense Department has equipment for dealing with oil slicks. Instead, Napalitano publicly chastized BP America for the way it handled the disaster. How vintage Obama: point fingers, assign blame elsewhere. Napolitano's agency waited the better part of a week before declaring the incident "a spill of national significance" (Good Lord, who writes her material?).

Then there's the most current domestic terrorism incident. Obama was just damned lucky that the Times Square bomber was inept. The Washington Times has posted a recent editorial: "Obama's good luck terrorism strategy." The editorial calls ObamaTeam "apparently obsessed" with downplaying the possibility that any Muslim could be a domestic terrorist: "It is the Obama team's perverse twist on racial and ethnic profiling.

Then there was the non-coverage in the lamestream media of the Tennessee flood. From someone writing at the Nashville Scene: "It was mind-boggling to flip by CNN, MSNBC, and FOX on Sunday afternoon and see not one station even occasionally bringing their viewers footage of the flood, news of our people dying." Obama, for his part, got in yet another round of golf. Has he even visited Tennessee? Not that I've heard.

God bless the people of Tennessee. As Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said something like (and I'm paraphrasing): our people aren't whiners, they aren't sitting around with their hands out waiting for government help; they're rolling up their sleeves and working to fix their problems and helping each other. I had to paraphrase the quote because it doesn't show up anywhere on Google, but I heard him say it yesterday on Fox News, obviously a reference to the differences between the way the people in Tennnessee reacted to their flooding disaster vs. how poeple reacted during Katrina.

"A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren't doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own." Frankly, after this press fiasco, I never want to hear another whining word about Katrina again.





Ed Morrissey at Hot Air says this: watch for the White House to change the narrative with a "leak" about the next SCOTUS, coming on Friday night. Ed, you're absolutely prescient. What was the first question put to Eric Holder on Meet the Press this morning? "When will the White House announce their pick for the Supreme Court?" Best guess at this point is that the new SCOTUS nominee will be Solicitor General Elena Kagan. She's a 50-year-old career academic who has never served as a judge or argued a case in front of an appellate court. Sounds like the perfect pick coming from our Chief Executive faux academic community organizer who himself is without a lick of executive experience.

Update: The Nashville flood damage alone is estimated at 1.5 billion. How's that golf game, Barry?

Update #2. NBC is reporting that U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan will be nominated to serve on the Supreme Court. MSNBC is reporting that she would be "the fourth woman in history to serve as justice." (Yawn.) If she is confirmed, she is replacing Justice John Paul Stevens. Considering that Justice Stevens is 90 years old, and Kagan is 50 years old, then this woman could be around for a long, long time.

Bob Gibbs in Hysteria Mode Again
(a "dog bites man" story)

Watching Gibbs melt down (whiney, sarcastic, egotistical, moody--and that's on a "good" day) at these White House "press briefings" (and I use the term as loosely as possible) is becoming an almost everyday thing. The Fox reporter, Wendell Goler, is a consummate professional. I can't believe the shit sandwich that Gibbs is serving up to him here. I would love someone who knows about body language to comment on all of Gibbs's nervous hand gestures during his rant about Fox News to Goler. Where does Gibbs think he gets the right to sarcastically refer to Wendell Goler as "my friend"?

This is as unprofessional as anything I've heard coming from someone with the title, White House Press Secretary. Gibbs says to Goler, who had absolutely nothing to do, by the way, with the Fox interview that Gibbs is whining about: "I've got to tell you, I'm not entirely sure that a factual answer that I might give to any one of your questions is gonna change the notion that your network put out the former FEMA director to make an accusation that, uh, the well had been purposefully set off, uh, in order to, uh, change, uh, an offshore drilling decision." Which is a TOTAL mischaracterization of what Michael Brown said in the interview--but why stick to facts, Gibbsy, let's just keep with the public emotional breakdown you and your White House are having over Fox News.

Wendell Goler, maybe the only adult in the room at the time, replied to Gibbs, "Nor would that affect the reporting I do."

Gibbs: "I, I, I, I didn't intimate that it did. Again, you and Major [Major Garrett, the other Fox News White House correspondent], should, uh, [more weird, anxious hand gestures--this guy is simply bizarre] . . . "

Goler: "If we can, let's move on from it."

Gibbs: "You can get on a conference call and maybe do some work. Go ahead."




This is what Michael Brown said in an interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News: "And I would not be surprised if the White House said, you know, we might be able to, guess what, do what? Use this crisis to our advantage. Let this crisis get really bad, and then we will step in. We will be able to shut down offshore drilling. We will be able to turn all these alternate fuels."

It was Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel himself who famously said, "Never let a good crisis go to waste."



I don't see how Brown's comments are so completely off the mark, as the AP factchecking story about the White House's response to the spill indicates--it's not as if the White House, as they would now like to claim, was Johnny-on-the-spot in this oil spill crisis.

Tony Snow, we miss you.