I am sure you will be SHOCKED to learn that Obama is acting in much the same way. I know, I know – what a surprise. Ahem. Well, it seems some one has been doing a little investigative journalism, something in VERY short supply of late. But get this – I tell you, you better be sitting down – in this case, it was – WAIT FOR IT –
MSNBC. YES, the very network to which we routinely refer as “MSNBO”! Once I recovered from the shock of it all, I couldn’t wait to see just how transparent President Obama was compared to Bush. (I wonder if there is a way for us to do a pool on these kinds of things, like for NCAA basketball or something?)

This is what MSNBC uncovered in this report:

Obama Names 110 White House Visitors

The White House on Friday released a small list of visitors to the White House since President Barack Obama took office in January, including lobbyists, business executives, activists and celebrities.

No previous administration has released such a list, though the information out so far is incomplete. Only about 110 names —and 481 visits —out of the hundreds of thousands who have visited the Obama White House were made public. Like the Bush administration before it, Obama is arguing that any release is voluntary, not required by law, despite two federal court rulings to the contrary.

The emphasis there is mine. This is a bit of a schizophrenic opening. On the one hand, they want to champion that Obama released 110 names – Woohoo!! On the other hand, they have to acknowledge that, once again, President Obama is using the SAME arguments as Bush. Moreover, this “Constitutional Scholar” is doing so in clear violation of not one, but TWO federal court rulings! Maybe the KoolAide was made improperly that day, I don’t know, but the report continues:

Under the Obama White House’s policy, most names of visitors from Inauguration Day in January through the end of September will never be released. The White House says it plans to release most of the names of visitors from October on, and that release is due near the end of the year. There are limitations there as well, including potential Supreme Court nominees, personal guests of the First Family, and certain security officials.

The names released Friday include business leaders and lobbyists with a lot to gain or lose from Obama policies. They include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (whose foundation is pushing for changes in teacher pay), former AIG chairman Maurice Greenberg, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, Chevron CEO David O’Reilly, Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JP Morgan’s James Dimon, Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis, John Stumpf of Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley’s John Mack, State Street bank’s Ron Logue, BNY Mellon’s Robert Kelly, labor leader Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union (22 visits)*, American Bankers Association CEO Ed Yingling, community bankers president Camden Fine, and lobbyists Heather and Anthony Podesta, whose brother John Podesta led Obama’s transition team.

Besides Gates, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt are also on the list. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC. One of NBC’s parents is GE.)

Advocates and nonprofit leaders include National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy, and Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is interested in health policy.

So, this is how Obama is paying these people and organizations back, by having them in the White House? I bet Kim Gandy was just all aflutter after she threw ALL women under the bus to endorse Obama over a life-long women’s advocate. There is more on her below.

I know many readers will be interested in this White House guest:

Democratic donor and businessman George Soros visited with White House aides twice.

Yes, indeedy, a major funder of Moveon.org has been to check up on his biggest investment – ahem – twice.

We’re just getting started:

Political figures include former Sen. Thomas Daschle, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, former Gov. Howard Dean, Sen. Al Franken, former Vice President Al Gore, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, and Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf.

Celebrities at the White House include Oprah Winfrey, actors Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Denzel Washington, and tennis star Serena Williams. Journalists include Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner in economics.

Conservative religious leader Gary Bauer visited, as did liberal civil rights leaders Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Okay, the last two, along with Oprah, are NOT a surprise. Gary Bauer? Just a tad surprising.

For anyone who wants to see more:

Msnbc.com has put the full list in a handy PDF file, and also in an Excel file for those who like to sort.

One guest is mighty interesting:

Not that Bill Ayers

The White House warns that many names that may appear familiar — and controversial — do not in fact refer to the most famous people to carry those names. Jeremiah Wright is on the list, but it’s not the president’s former pastor. This Michael Jordan is not the basketball player. This Michael Moore is not a filmmaker. The William Ayers who took a group tour of the White House isn’t the former radical from Chicago who figured so prominently in the 2008 campaign. And the Angela Davis on the list has a different middle initial than the activist and former fugitive.

The White House could have avoided some of that sort of confusion by providing more information on the visitors, such as an employer name and the city they hail from. For example, is the Shawn Carter who attended a poetry reading the same one who goes by Jay-Z and had campaigned for Obama?

“This unprecedented level of transparency can sometimes be confusing rather than providing clear information,” a White House special counsel, Norm Eisen, wrote on the White House blog.

If you spot a name on the list that bears investigating, please drop us a note.

Of COURSE we will just trust Obama and his spokes-minions when they assure us that this Bill Ayers could not POSSIBLY be domestic terrorist – Capitol Building and Pentagon bomber – long time friend and mentor Bill Ayers! He is just some guy who wanted to visit the White House Gift Shop and pick up a couple of Marine One helicopter models for his boys. I am sure of it. Sheesh. Really? They expect us to believe this crap? Evidently – they got plenty of other people to believe that kind of crap and more, so why stop now?

Okay – if you are consuming any liquids right this minute, I suggest you put it down when you read this:

Limited release

Despite the accompanying White House claim of “transparency like you’ve never seen before,” the Obama White House continues to take the same legal position as the Bush White House, arguing that the records are not public records subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Only limited “voluntary releases” are being made to settle a lawsuit filed by an advocacy group, though a federal judge has twice ruled that all the visitor logs are public. (Again, emphasis is mine.)

Yet there are severe limitations to the transparency:

Most of the visitors from Inauguration Day to September will never be released by the White House under this voluntary disclosure — unless the public can guess their names. The White House policy doesn’t allow members of the public or press to ask for “everyone who visited health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle,” or everyone who visited on May 4, or everyone from the American Medical Association. Only individual names can be checked.

I know, right? Didn’t this sound just a little pissy?? From someone at MSNBC?? The bigger picture is that the Obama Administration is BREAKING THE LAW. Hell to the YES, that information falls under FOIA – this is OUR White House, not the Obamas. We most definitely DO get to know every single John Smith and Jane Doe who cross the threshold of the White House. You better believe we do.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it is a start:

The list released at 4:30 p.m. Friday includes just about 110 names with 481 visits. Those names were among those requested by members of the public so far, for visits during the period from Inauguration Day through July. (That’s why we know of visits by the wrong Bill Ayers, the wrong Angela Davis, etc., but we don’t know of visits by countless unnamed lobbyists.) Members of the public who used the White House online form to check names did not receive a personal reply indicating whether or not the request was received, or whether the name appeared on the list, so the system provides no feedback. Does the absence of Bill Clinton’s name on the list mean that he has not been to the White House, or that the request wasn’t received by the White House online system?

A request for the complete records of all visitors from the first months of the administration, filed by msnbc.com, was rejected by the White House, and an appeal is pending. The news organization requested the names of all visitors to the Obama White House beginning with Inauguration Day. Msnbc.com has filed an administrative appeal with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service.

Say whaa?? The White House rejected a request from their lapdog “news” source?? Huh. There’s a shocker. Welcome to the “Under The Bus” club, MSNBC!

The Wall Street Journal focused on the most frequent visitor to the White House. He was mentioned in the list above, but without the acknowledgment of the frequency:

SEIU’s Stern Tops White House Visitor List

Promising “transparency like you’ve never seen before,” The White House released its visitor log this evening under a new voluntary disclosure policy.

The log chronicles 481 visits to the White House from individuals ranging from Jay-Z to Bill Gates from January through July.

The list includes William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Moore, Robert Kelly (R. Kelly), Malik Shabazz, and Michael Jordan.

But the White House said those aren’t the guys you’re thinking of. Nor is the log complete.

Ahahahahahahaha!!! I just cannot get enough of this one – sure, they aren’t the same people. Yeah, okay, we believe you. NOT. And because it is just so much fun to see them squirm, I am keeping in the part that is repetitive of the article above, especially the quotes from Eisen. Oh, what a funny guy:

“A lot of people visit the White House, up to 100,000 each month, with many of those folks coming to tour the buildings. Given this large amount of data, the records we are publishing today include a few ‘false positives’ – names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else,” Norm Eisen, a special counsel to the president, writes on the White House blog. “The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House. Nevertheless, we were asked for those names and so we have included records for those individuals who were here and share the same names.”

Adds Eisen: “This unprecedented level of transparency can sometimes be confusing rather than providing clear information.”

Uh, ya know, I think we are all smart enough to not get all confused by this incredible level of “transparency.” Beginning with, we actually know the definition of “transparency,” something Eisen and Obama apparently do not.

And then there is this:

One thing is clear: *Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern holds sway at the White House, where he’s listed for 22 visits—the top number on the logs. Visitors in the top 10 also include former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy, and NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan.

So THAT’S what Gandy and Keenan got for stabbing Hillary Clinton and, well, WOMEN, int he back – visits to the White House. I guess there is something gained by selling your soul, though, personally, I don’t think it is worth it. But that’s just me.

Anywho – yes, the President of the SEIU, again, the union co-founded by the founder of ACORN, Wade Rathke, is the TOP visitor at the White House. The SEIU has been in the news quite a bit, especially for holding California hostage – threatening that their good buddy, Obama, would not give the state any federal stimulus funds if it had the audacity to expect the union to cut wages like everyone else so the state wouldn’t go bankrupt. NOW we know how the union was able to do that. All those visits to the White House apparently paid off – for the union, not California, the state with one of the largest budgets around (as in 5th in the world). What makes this more egregious is that California pays a lot into the federal tax system and receives little comparatively speaking. And this union is allowed – by the White House – to hold it over a barrel. Yep, all those meetings seemed to do the trick!

Aren’t you just so heartened by all of this “transparency”? And by seeing who Obama is welcoming into our White House? Yeah, me, too. As long as the Obama Administration continues to thumb its nose at Federal Law, I reckon we should be “thankful” for this (no, not really – it’s BS that they are still sitting on so much information).

Oh, but if you can just GUESS who might else have been there and submit that form asking them, maybe you can confirm some other folks who have been there, too. Lemme know what you find out, okay? I am sure we would all just love to know…

Remember when George Bush and Dick Cheney could rely on the many in the media to help them euphemize that dirty word, “torture?” It wasn’t torture, it was “enhanced interrogation.” That’s like calling the amputation of a leg, “enhanced skin removal below the waist.”

For those of you who were hoping for a new day. For those of you wanting change you could believe in. I have three words for you.

FORGET ABOUT IT!!

Today’s headline in the Washington Post, “GM Chief to Resign at White House’s Behest.” Great Marlon Brando’s ghost!! Talk about using language to cover up the truth. I guess it could have been worse. The White House could have said it made Wagoner an offer he couldn’t refuse. Did Luca Brasi pay Wagoner a visit? (If you have not seen the movie, The Godfather, you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about.)

Let’s be clear about what happened here. Barack Obama, somehow, is now in a position to fire the CEO of a publicly traded company. The phraseology employed to describe what happened to Wagoner reminds me of an observation from my friend Janet. Janet, who is from the midwest, noted that folks on the east coast frequently will complain by stating, “I have an issue.” Janet told me:

They may be issues on the east coast but in the midwest they are fucking problems.

The firing of Rick Wagoner was not made for any rational economic reason. This is pure politics, designed in part to portray Barack as a tough guy who is taking charge on the eve of his international debut at the G20 summit. Not a single person on the Obama economic team has ever run a business or met a payroll. Barack and his team of bozos could not find a Secretary of Treasury who felt it important to pay taxes and wanted to appoint Tom Daschle to run Health and Human Services even though he was a lobbyist taking freebies on the side. And these are the people who want us to believe that they know how to run a car company?

Well Barack, it is your baby now. You are in charge of GM and its fate. If it survives and prospers you will be doing the big booty shake as you celebrate your second inauguration. But if GM falters, no amount of obfuscation and murky language will be able to mask the stink of this turd.

At least 13 companies receiving billions of dollars in bailout money owe more than $220 million in unpaid federal taxes, a lawmaker said Thursday.

The lawmaker, Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and chairman of a House subcommittee overseeing the federal bailout, said two companies owed more than $100 million each.

The House Ways and Means Committee’s subcommittee on oversight discovered the unpaid taxes in a review of tax records from 23 of the companies receiving the most bailout money, Mr. Lewis said, as he opened a hearing on the issue.

“This is shameful; it is a disgrace,” he said. “We are going to get to the bottom of what is going on here.”

The subcommittee said it could not legally release the names of the companies owing taxes.

Well, why the hell NOT??

If they can identify themselves to take OUR hard earned money, they can DAMN sure reveal themselves, or have Congress do it for them. That is absurd!

And John Lewis should sure know about shameful and disgraceful conduct, after the way he plunged the knife into Hillary Clinton’s back about a thousand times (you may recall, he was one of her early supporters who sang her praises up one side and down the other. Until the Black Caucus and Jesse Jackson, Jr., on behalf of Barack Obama, told him, and a few other African American congresspeople who supported Clinton, that if they did not toe the line and support Obama, they could expect to have some heavily funded challengers come nest election season. So, he caved. Yes, he did. In the “karma sucks” department, though, he is having to face a challenger anyway because he supported Clinton in the FIRST place. Obama is just a tad vindictive, you see. Serve’s his ass right, though, for having no freakin’ integrity.

That is to say, spare me the indignation, Rep. Lewis.

Get this:

It said one recipient had almost $113 million in unpaid federal income taxes from 2005 and 2006. A second recipient owed almost $102 million dating to before 2004.

Mr. Lewis said that his panel planned to review tax records from other companies receiving federal money, but that he was unsure if it would look at every one.

Banks and other companies receiving federal money were required to sign contracts stating that they had no unpaid taxes, Mr. Lewis said. But he said the Treasury Department did not ask them to turn over their tax records.

The Internal Revenue Service, a division of the Treasury Department, said it would expect the unpaid taxes to be paid.

Oh, yeah – I’m sure Timmy Geithner is gonna get RIGHT on that!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

But here’s the thing, Rep. Lewis. Y’ALL are the ones who crafted this document WITH NO OVERSIGHT IN SIGHT. And you’re going to come back NOW and pretend outrage that these companies, who owe MILLIONS of taxes, are getting OUR tax money??? Seems to me the Congress just helped them STEAL money. Our money.

And if they had to sign a statement stating they didn’t owe taxes and took BILLIONS anyway, then why aren’t they being brought up on CRIMINAL charges? And WHY WON’T YOU REVEAL THEIR NAMES???? So much for transparency, eh, Rep. Lewis??

Oh, and get this hilarious joke:

“The I.R.S. recognizes that those entities that receive taxpayer support have a special obligation to pay their taxes,” an agency spokesman, Frank Keith, said in a statement. “And these taxpayer accounts will remain closely monitored by the I.R.S. to ensure that the full amount of taxes due are paid.”

Mr. Keith said there could be many reasons for an unpaid balance, including the possibility that a bill was being challenged.

Yeah, sure, okay – because the IRS has proved to be so competent in retrieving these high dollar taxes. Just spare me already. Now the rest of us know what Geithner and Daschle have known for a while – the IRS isn’t exactly Johnny-On-The-Spot in securing taxes from the high rollers!

And while I am talking about Tim Geithner, my favorite economist, Paul Krugman, had this piece in the NY Times, Despair Over Financial Policy. Krugman writes:

The Geithner plan has now been leaked in detail. It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed — and found wanting — a couple of weeks ago. The zombie ideas have won.

The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.

To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding.

But it’s immediately obvious, if you think about it, that these funds will have skewed incentives. In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem.

Or to put it another way, Treasury has decided that what we have is nothing but a confidence problem, which it proposes to cure by creating massive moral hazard.

This plan will produce big gains for banks that didn’t actually need any help; it will, however, do little to reassure the public about banks that are seriously undercapitalized. And I fear that when the plan fails, as it almost surely will, the administration will have shot its bolt: it won’t be able to come back to Congress for a plan that might actually work.

What an awful mess.

Well, that’s the understatement of the 21st century.

I could be wrong, but didn’t people actually go to JAIL for the Texas S&L scandal??? Now Obama and Co. are actively PURSUING that strategy? What the hell is wrong with this picture???

Yes, this IS an “awful mess.” When are the grown ups going to come along and put a stop to it, I wonder? Oh, wait – WE are the grown ups, and we have to tell them enough, no more, stop giving our tax dollars to companies that can’t be bothered to pay THEIR taxes. Stop setting up plans that are identical to illegal strategies for which people have served time. Stop enabling this inept president who claims he didn’t even know what was in the Stimulus bill he signed into law, which included a provision his chief of staff and his Treasury Secretary set in place. Stop the freakin’ faux outrage, too, while you’re at it, because we aren’t buying the crap you are selling. And what you are selling is us down the river. Enough already!

Centrist, milquetoast Democrat Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS) hopes to resign from her position as Governor of Kansas in order to assume the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services under her friend Barack Obama. But she is yet to be confirmed for the position by the Committee of jurisdiction in the US Senate. Sebelius endorsed Obama during the primaries immediately after she delivered a hopelessly boring and soporific response to Bush’s State of the Union Address last year. Staging a media event on behalf of the sexist and misogynistic machine that undemocratically secured Obama the Democratic nomination, Sebelius is owed a favor.

She was considered for the position of Obama’s Vice Presidential running mate, but sexist Obama chose a man named Biden instead.

Tom Daschle’s lobbying and tax problems created a vacancy in the Cabinet, however, and now Obama can finally reciprocate the favor Sebelius performed during the primary. Too bad Sebelius may be just as controversial as Tom Daschle.

According to the Kansas City Star, Republicans in Kansas are investigating the mismanagement of Medicaid funds under Kathleen Sebelius. This is relevant, as the Secretary of Health and Human Services oversees and supervises Medicaid. The article explains how a not for profit organization politically connected to Sebelius received $713,000 in extra Medicaid funds at a time when state agencies told other service providers that no Medicaid funds existed.

Lenexa-based Community Living Opportunities was awarded nearly $713,000 in extra Medicaid funds. The group serves developmentally disabled Kansans, primarily in Johnson and Douglas counties.

At the time, the agency’s board of directors included Kansas Democratic Party Chairman Larry Gates, a Sebelius confidant, and his former law partner, Dan Biles, whom Sebelius appointed to the state Supreme Court this year. Lew Perkins, the University of Kansas athletic director, also serves on the board. Biles has since stepped down from the board.

The allegations come as Sebelius, a Democrat, awaits U.S. Senate confirmation to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers Medicaid.

Neither Sebelius nor Gates was at the hearing Wednesday. But Sebelius has said she had nothing to do with the funding decision, which was made by Don Jordan, her secretary of social and rehabilitation services. Gates also has denied speaking to Sebelius about the funding request.

Yet other service providers maintain that the state told them no extra funding was available. They told lawmakers at the hearing Wednesday that Community Living Opportunities was allowed to skip the usual process of requesting extra funds, which involves going before a local agency that oversees such requests.

Carolyn Risley Hill, chief executive of Starkey Inc., a Wichita-based service provider, worked for the state for 20 years and said she never saw a provider get the special treatment that Community Living received.

Community Living Opportunities, a service provider connected to Sebelius, received a grant at a time when other service provides of Medicaid were told no funds existed. But even worse, this organization did not have to complete the usual process to gain these extra funds. These reeks of political cronyism, of special treatment, of quid pro quo politics. More egregious, however, is how this cronyism involved Medicaid funds, funds that are usually spent to provide health care to the disabled.

How did Community Living Opportunities, the Medicaid provider politically connected to Sebelius spend the extra funds? Here is the Kansas City Star:

Yet at the same time Community Living petitioned the state, it was developing a 40-acre ranch in Douglas County for use as a therapeutic equestrian and activity center for its clients. The property cost $400,000, Community Living executives told lawmakers Wednesday. A home, stable and swimming pool have been built.

At a time when they were petitioning state government for more Medicaid funds, Community Living Opportunities was building an exclusive ranch with luxurious amenities on a piece of property that cost $400,000. And they were allowed to circumvent the process whereby providers normally apply for such funds. Medicaid, in other words, went toward a ranch to be used by the politically connected and the powerful. Funds for the disabled instead went to a ranch that in many ways resembles a resort.

And Obama thinks the person who may have been responsible for funneling Medicaid dollars to a politically connected organization that obtained that money while they were building a ranch should manage the nation’s Medicaid funds? Will Medicaid dollars now be funneled to Obama’s political contributors who will invest it in property or use it to build resorts? Why does this remind me of Rezko?

The Kansas state legislature is investigating the matter, and more and more questions arise as they probe deeper and deeper into the connections between Sebelius and her friends at Community Living Opportunities. Daschle had tax and lobbying problems, and Sebelius has what appears to be a political cronyism problem at the expense of the indigent and the disabled. Is someone who views funds for the indigent and the disabled as cash for political allies fit to serve as Secretary of Heath and Human Services? Is she the one who should be managing the nation’s Medicaid funds?

And when will Obama finally learn to vet those he nominates to his Cabinet?

Well get this. Oh, this is good. Another one of Obama’s appointees, Vivek Kundra, had two people under him who have been arrested by the FBI. Yes, you read that right, and you can read more here:

An employee of the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer and a private contractor were charged with corruption Thursday after an FBI raid at the former office of one of President Obama’s appointees, Vivek Kundra.

Kundra is on leave from his White House job until further details of the case become known, a White House source tells the Associated Press.

Gee, ya THINK??? Well, then again, int his age of Chicago-style politics gone national, who the hell knows? In Obama’s world, he’ll probably get a PROMOTION or something after this. You know there’s more:

Kundra has not been linked to Thursday’s raid.

Yusuf Acar, 40, acting chief security officer of the D.C. Office of the CTO, was charged with bribery of a public official, money laundering, wire fraud and conflict of interest.

Acar was ordered held without bond until a hearing Tuesday.

FBI agents found $70,000 in Acar’s Northwest D.C. home when they arrested him Thursday morning.

Acar, a native of Turkey, is responsible for buying D.C.’s computer equipment and hiring contract workers for various D.C. agencies. Acar, who has been with the agency since December 2004, has an annual salary of $127,468, according to charging documents.

Sushil Bansal, President and CEO of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corporation (AITC) and a former D.C. government employee, was charged with bribery of a public official, money laundering, wire fraud and conflict of interest.

Bansal, 41, was released but ordered not to engage in overseas financial transactions and had to surrender his passport. Bansal, of Dunn Loring, Va., is due back in court on April 21.

Government records show Bansal, a native of India, is not a U.S. citizen and holds an H-1B visa, which is given to foreign workers in specialty occupations.

Authorities say Acar and Bansal, along with others, used a variety of schemes to defraud the D.C. government, including billing the District for inventory that was never delivered and billing “ghost” contract employees who never worked.

The alleged scheme involved Acar approving falsified bills and then splitting the money with Bansal – who submitted them – and other vendors, according to charging documents.

Wowie zowie. WHO is it that is supposed to be vetting people to work in the White House again? What am I saying – OBAMA was never thoroughly vetted, why should his employees have to be? Ahem. At least the FBI is playing well with others:

The FBI worked with another D.C. Office of the CTO employee who was in on the scheme and secretly recorded conversations with Acar and Bansal as part of the investigation.

Several other individuals and businesses are involved in the alleged schemes, but an FBI affidavit supporting the arrest warrants only identifies them by their initials.

Bansal’s company has offices in D.C. and India and received more than $13 million in business with the D.C. government in the past five years, according to court documents.

One contract involved providing computer support to the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles. The company also was given a contract to upgrade the city’s human resources computer records and sold virus detection software to the city.

In 2008, Bansal received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Association of Indians in America, according to AITC’s Web site.

Last week, Kundra resigned from his post as D.C. chief technology officer to take a job in the Obama administration as the federal government’s chief information officer.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the Department of Justice told the White House on Thursday morning of its planned raid.

However, Gibbs declined to comment on whether the White House was aware of the investigation before Thursday.

“No comment! No comment!” That is going to become the new “Words, Just Words!” of the Obama Administration, dontcha think? Gibbs hasn’t been all that inspiring anyway, but boy, oh, boy – when something like this comes down the pike, I’m sure he has to be shoved out to the podium.

And here’s the rest:

AITC has been working with the D.C. government since 2004. Once Kundra took over as D.C. Chief Technology Officer in March 2007, AITC’s contracts doubled to more than $5 million in 2008.

Kundra has also worked for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). During his time at SAIC, Kundra provided consulting services at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

On AITC’s Web site, Bansal lists SAIC as one of AITC’s strategic partners and says his firm has performed contract work for HHS.

On Thursday morning, the FBI served a search warrant at the office of D.C.’s Chief Technology Officer.

More than a dozen FBI agents – including evidence technicians – were at the office, located at 1 Judiciary Square on 4th Street in Northwest.

Most of the employees were told to go home. Other employees were put into a waiting room.

The FBI later expanded its search from 9th floor offices to 10th floor offices.

The 10th floor was closed to the public while the FBI searched the offices that house the Administrative Services Modernization Program.

As the raid took place, Kundra was giving a speech at FOSE – an annual government technology expo – about changing the way the government purchases materials from vendors.

Doesn’t the irony make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Or is that just your blood pressure rising? Kundra is giving a speech about changing the way the government buys stuff from vendors, while his office is being raided! You cannot make this shit up, people. It is almost laughable. Almost.

What happened to the “Change in the way things are done in Washington” meme that we heard about AD NAUSEUM from Obama? I guess the change is that they are just becoming more blatant about hiring a bunch of crooks. Holy smokes. If this keeps up, I’m gonna need a scorecard…

Barack Obama would not be where he is today without Howard Dean. The former Vermont Governor and DNC Chairman created the blueprints that David Axelrod would expand upon to garner the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination for the junior Senator from Illinois. In 2004 Dean built a presidential nomination campaign based on grassroots support and small internet donations. He energized the net roots and helped the far left blogosphere find a voice and influence.

Dean did not succeed, but Obama’s team had four years to study what he did right and where he went wrong. They found ways to exploit regulations involving internet donations, control the flow of information on blogs and add some old fashioned Chicago wrangling to the caucus game.

After losing out in 2004, Dean’s consolation prize was to chair the DNC. He took a party stung by the loss of John Kerry and the despair that followed and helped energize it. His 50 state strategy helped pave the way for Obama’s red state organizing and was key to providing President Obama with the congressional majorities he now enjoys. Dean also helped stack the deck in Obama’s favor. The Florida and Michigan mess played out Obama’s way thanks to a heavy DNC hand, the DNC stayed remarkably silent over documented instances of caucus fraud and even this most progressive party chair had nothing to say over the mistreatment of Senator Hillary Clinton and the outright misogyny displayed throughout the campaign.

This of course makes Dean the perfect passenger for a ride under the Obama bus.

Howard Dean probably never expected to stay on as DNC Chairman following the Obama victory. Tradition has the President selecting his “own man” to head the party. Even so, it would be hard for Governor Tim Kaine to deliver for Obama the way Dean did. Dean was apparently not even welcome to the press conference where Obama tapped Kaine to be the next chair. I am sure they made sure the door didn’t hit Howie in the ass on the way out. One could imagine Obama saying “thanks for the help there Ho (an endearing term used by the rappers the President enjoys), but we won’t be needing you around here anymore.”

Today, there just happens to be a help wanted sign on the office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. There is probably no Democrat as qualified for this position as Howard Dean. He is a doctor and former governor with a record of expanding health care opportunities for the residents of Vermont, particularly children. He is a favorite with the progressive base that will called upon to generate support for some form of nationalized health care and has proven he can organize and win political battles.

He also has no shot of landing the job (although his odds are slightly better than Tom Daschle’s.) White House insiders say there are worried that Dean is too divisive and partisan to bring Republicans into the fold. Some GOP support will be needed to get any kind of meaningful health care reform through the Senate. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is also no fan of Dr. Dean. The two apparently had some real knock down, drag out battles over how DNC funds would be used in congressional races back when Emanuel was the head of the Congressional Campaign Committee.

Dean no longer has any real value to the Obama administration, he has given them all he can. If they really wanted him at HHS, they could have him. They could leave the GOP wooing to someone else and let him just work on the policy. However, Dean is used up as far as the Obama team is concerned and just not worth any potential headaches.

The net roots are trying help Dean’s case with petitions and postings and old liners like Tom Harkin are pushing his candidacy, but it is all for naught. The word on the street is that Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will be the pick (once her tax returns have been vetted by a team of 50 different accountants.) She is a one time state insurance commissioner and has spent the last eight years as a Governor overseeing a state medicaid program. Coming from red state Kansas, she is skilled at working across party lines. It will be a surprise if she is not the pick.

As for Howard Dean, well hopefully Sebelius will craft a plan that covers injuries sustained while being run over by the Obama bus.

It is not humanly possible for someone so inexperienced, with limited understanding of the tangled economic issues we face, a less than sophisticated understanding of foreign policy, or even the machinations of Congress, a man with no governing or executive experience, and precious little legislative experience to be able to step up to the plate at this critical juncture and perform miracles. Even to perform decently. That would be ridiculous. Nothing in President Obama’s life thus far has trained him for these challenges. No offense, but community organizing won’t cut it.
You can’t know what you don’t know.

The true problem, greater than all of the above, is that his pathology involves his believing naively, or narcissistically, in his own ability to move mountains on the force of his own personality. And further, that the DNC elite and the media enabled him at every turn to believe this was true.

No wonder he has that lemon-sucking look we were all too familiar with from President Bush; as he is very displeased that we are not all happily falling in line for his stimulus bill.

I believe he made a statement over a year ago, “anywhere Barack goes is Barack country.”

How’s that working out in Washington so far?

Likewise, I remember a stump speech of Secretary Clinton’s during the primary. I am paraphrasing, but her intent was clear: while it is romantic to believe that we could all hold hands and be bi-partisan, the reality is, special interests and the opposition dig their heels in deep – and you have to be prepared to go to the mat.

A person of some humility, at least willing to acknowledge what he doesn’t know, would have spent every spare moment these past two years “hitting the books” so to speak, instead of surrounding himself with those who echoed the message that the cult of personality was enough to sustain him. Otherwise, I can assure you, he never would have dared to stand before the American people as unprepared as he was for certain questions; or required his trusty TelePrompTer as a buffer zone wherever he went.

Harnden begins his article:

During last year’s epic election campaign, Hillary Clinton said that in the White House “there is no time for on-the-job training.” Joe Biden, too, remarked that the presidency was “not something that lends itself to on-the-job training”. Both were aiming barbs at their then primary opponent. Mrs. Clinton has since brought what she would refer to as her “lifetime of experience” to the role of Secretary of State, while Mr Biden has traded 36 years in the Senate for the vice-presidency. And the rookie they derided is President.

Well, I don’t know how derisive it is to tell the truth. He is a rookie. And Mr. Harnden doesn’t need to put Clinton’s “lifetime of experience” in quotes, because quite obviously, that is what she has. And I, for one, would prefer her at the helm right now. As she herself put it, in addition to her experience as a two term Senator with six years on the Foreign Armed Services Committee, as one of our most active first ladies, she “apprenticed in the White House for eight years.”

What a formidable advantage this would have been for us at this difficult time – and one the DNC wasted: to have someone assume the office of the Presidency who for eight years stood so close to the ultimate decision maker and was privy to information you and I can only guess at; someone who understands the players on the world stage and the workings of Congress, who has reached across the aisle effectively, not to mention the depth and breadth of her knowledge on the economy and foreign policy.

How could he possibly compete? You see, that is where all of the “enabling” comes in. His closest advisors, Daschle, Kerry, Axelrod et al urged him to run too soon because they figured it would be better that he not have a Senate record with controversial votes that could be pinned on him. They wanted a “symbol of change,” a blank slate, and forgot the most important factor: know-how. They enabled this rookie by filling his head full of sugar plums, as have some of his other mentors of questionable motives and integrity.

Mr. Harnden’s next statement makes this quite clear:

Now, the words of his former rivals are returning to haunt President Obama. After a distinctly rocky start to his presidency, he has admitted he “screwed up” and is returning to one thing in his political career that he has perfected – campaigning. In Elkhart, Indiana, today and Fort Myers, Florida, tomorrow, Mr Obama will try to seize back control of the political agenda with question-and-answer sessions with voters in two of the swing states that gave him victory.

Already, however, he is struggling, and the product he is now selling is not himself but a near-trillion-dollar economic “stimulus” package loaded with pet Democratic spending projects that has awakened slumbering Republicans in Congress and is now supported by barely a third of Americans. In between the Indiana and Florida stops, he will return to the White House for a prime-time press conference in which he will appeal directly to citizens and seek to rekindle the magic of his campaign.

But we don’t need any more campaigning, and we don’t need to “rekindle” any magic. We need him rolling up his sleeves and hashing this bill out around the clock with the full Senate. I am not interested in any more sales pitches, just solutions. Beyond chanting, “yes, we can” – and believe me, for the sake of our country, I’d love nothing better than to be able to do so – the reality is when people are afraid of losing their homes and their jobs, their patience runs thin awfully fast with slogans and a dazzling smile.

Harnden points out Obama’s naivété in assuming that once in office, he could continue his honeymoon in the media or with the American people:

…Last week, [Obama] began as a wide-eyed bystander buffeted by events as he lost his key confidant, Tom Daschle, amid an uproar over $128,000 in unpaid taxes for a chauffeur and limousine. Mr Obama and his advisers believed the oversight did not matter because the over-arching virtue of the new White House could not be doubted. He was wrong and seemed out of touch in believing that ordinary people would not notice the contrast between the practice of politics as usual and his campaign slogans against it.

“We lived it for two years, and we forgot it for a couple of weeks,” Mr Gibbs remarked ruefully when asked about why Team Obama rationalised away their own principles because they wanted their old friend in the Cabinet.

In my view, Mr. Obama and his team forgot ‘their principles” for more than a couple of weeks – this is nonsense and his whole campaign was built on do as I say, not as I do. And again, enabling came into play. The media called him on almost none of this. Further, in his presser last night, he promised total transparency and after only a few weeks in office , even the media is complaining this is not the case. “Words. Just words.”

Contrary to what one would expect, his ‘delivery’ and his smile are a part of his armor — designed to distance, to protect, rather than to invite in or clarify. More sales; less substance. I find, particularly when reading from his prompter, he is hitting the notes in his phrasing, but it is mechanical. With rare exception, there is a disturbing disconnect from his words. Last night, he came across as rather angry, as if he is trying to boss the American people into doing what he wants. Er, he is the boss. But it still feels like a performance. And why in the hell can’t he just look into the damned camera and talk to us? Uh, you can arrange to have a prompter right in a large format camera screen, dear. Then at least Obama would look like he is talking to the American people, not pretending he is a lighthouse.

The “performance” is not enough, especially when he cannot back up those words with true passion and understanding for the policies he is trying to sell. And his record of taking action merely for political expediency is likewise worrisome.

Harnden continues:

In the early days of his presidency, Mr Obama has seemed passive and uncertain. Instead of drawing up his own economic stimulus bill, he sub-contracted the job to Democrats on Capitol Hill. They opted to spend money on projects for contraception and beautifying the National Mall – their doorstep – and gave Republicans an plenty of ammunition against the package.

Slipped into the small print was a “Buy America” provision that sent shock waves through capitals from Brussels to Beijing and triggered fears of trade wars and a new American protectionism. It was hard for the President to defend a bill he perhaps didn’t fully support himself. He neither championed the package as imperfect but essential, nor sought to make meaningful changes to it. He attempted to charm Republican centrists with his own personality and the trappings of the White House by inviting them over for cocktails and a Super Bowl party. It didn’t work. Of 219 Republicans on Capitol Hill, only three voted for the bill. Introducing a $500,000 pay cap for some Wall Street executives was empty – and possibly counter-productive – populism.

Mr. Obama cast aside his emollient talk to deliver the red meat at Williamsburg. It was an abrupt change of tone that will come with a price, just as the double standard of preaching about the evils of influence-peddling and lobbyists and then giving Mr. Daschle a pass on his tax evasion will not be forgotten by many ordinary Americans.

Again, this is the politics of personality at work. President Obama could not possibly believe he could simply charm Republicans with cocktails and that would do it. As anyone from a dysfunctional family can attest, you create a Frankenstein when you protect the offending family member from the truth, or fail to hold them accountable for their actions.

Interestingly, Harnden observes:

The activists who formed the backbone of Mr Obama’s election campaign appear less than energised. Few answered his call for house-party gatherings at the weekend to build support for the economic stimulus plan…

Where are all of his supporters who need to go to bat and work the phones and emails for his stimulus package? Perhaps they too are fearful that Speaker Pelosi’s creation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Governing, as Mr Obama is finding out, is not like an election campaign. Mr. Bush’s failures will give him some leeway and his transformative appeal remains potent. But making decisions and operating the levers of power is something completely new to him. And it shows.

Indeed, getting out on the national stage as the new president, part of his job is to calm and reassure the American people that no matter how tough things may look now, we will get back on the right track. Standing up there last night at his presser, petulantly complaining ‘I inherited this deficit’ is childish and churlish under the circumstances. We know he inherited it. He also wanted the job. And he was in the Senate when the roots of this disaster were happening in the banking sector and with increased spending on the Iraq war. He was a willing participant and cannot claim ignorance or innocence now. I have had quite enough of him saying “I didn’t know.”

Since many of us wondered how he might handle the pressure cooker that is the White House, and navigate the treacherous waters of Congress, it would have been a true service to the American people had the media ever echoed our concern back when it counted for something, and really hit him with the full force of the fourth estate, such as it once was.

If that were the case a year ago, perhaps we might have seen what he is truly made of, and whether or not he was equipped to be more than a salesman or a campaigner. Leadership is not petulant. Leadership does not complain “hey, don’t blame me.” Leadership finds a way to inspire without scolding. And leadership does not use the politics of fear to get an agenda passed. We’ve just experienced eight years of that behavior, thank you very much.

The DNC elite were so focused on what they assumed would be the future of their party, filling their coffers with the donations he could generate; and the media was concerned with romanticizing Obama as a candidate instead of applying rational thought to what might actually happen if someone that untested were to assume the office. The result is that President Obama – at least at this moment – must revert to the thing he does best: campaigning.

He is going to have to grow an entirely new skill set. Over 60 million people took a leap of faith that he is his word. That leap of faith was pretty much all they had to go on. His handling of this stimulus package thus far is, however, more of the same old Washington song and dance. I wonder how long the American people will likewise ‘enable’ the cult of personality.

A “Savior-based” economy. Well, Heaven knows, Obama has certainly been set up as The Messiah, so it makes sense that this would be the kind of economy he would want. Ahem. (If you want to read the text of Gov. Sanford’s interview, please click HERE.) Bear in mind that SC has a very high unemployment rate right now, so we most definitely have a horse in this race. Gov. Sanford is not being a PollyAnna here. Rather than continue the band-aide mentality and prolong the agony like Japan did, Gov. Sanford wants to deal with the issues up front. The recovery would come sooner through the natural course of events (a bit of Darwinism, if you will), rather than prolonging it by continuing with the Stimulus Package that doesn’t do enough for job creation. It is an interesting take by the governor.

And another Southerner has spoken up, too. Rep. Heath Shuler, former NFL quarterback who is in his second term, represents the Western part of NC. And he supported Hillary Clinton for president. Well, he is taking Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to task for their “failed leadership” in drafting this stimulus package. He claims they have failed by not engaging in a bi-partisan manner in detailing this package. He said in this AP article:

“In order for us to get the confidence of America, it has to be done in a bipartisan way,” Shuler said in Raleigh following an economic forum. “We have to have everyone – Democrats and Republicans standing on the stage with the administration – saying ‘We got something done that was efficient, stimulative and timely.’”

He continued:

“I truly feel that’s where maybe House leadership and Senate leadership have really failed,” Shuler said.

Wow. A Democrat who actually cares about fulfilling the promises made by Obama (though honestly – why did anyone believe him? There were NUMEROUS examples of Obama failing to work across the aisle during his exceedingly brief time in the Senate, unlike, say, CLINTON, who did actually work in a bi-partisan manner.).

Oh, and get this – Shuler thinks the package should actually be about job creation through infrastructure spending, though he was very concerned about the amount of debt the current package would create. Huh. What a concept. Shame that didn’t occur to any of these other bozos who allegedly represent us.

And I am sure you have heard by now about what else has been hidden in this package. Oh, this is a DOOZY. Seems there were some, um, INTERESTING little health care tidbits in the package the Senate is trying to ram through. Turns out there are three very odd components in there: 1. ration health care for senior citizens; 2. limit medical research; and 3. and monitoring doctors’ treatment decisions. You should hear the hooey being spewed by some of the senators I have seen today on how stuff like this got in there, and how they didn’t know if it was really there or not BECAUSE THEY HAVEN’T HAD TIME TO READ IT ALL!!!! Yet, they are VOTING on it this morning! As I have previously reported, there is all KINDS of pork built into this package, and now this on health care. Reports are that Tom Daschle got these items put in – which begs the question, HOW? He is not an elected official, and I am pretty sure he had already canned himself for the Health and Human Services job because he, too, is a tax evader (on a MASSIVE scale). Here is Megyn Kelly talking to Senator Arlen Specter about this add-in:

So, how did it get in there, then??? And, how are we to know if it is taken out? Since, as Senator Specter kept saying, this package is hundreds and hundreds of pages long, it seems to me that maybe, just MAYBE, SOMEONE could have taken the time to read the damn thing before they decided to vote on it. Oh, but that would mean “CATASTROPHE!!!!” to the country for them to actually take a day or two for them to have committee meetings and know what the hell is in there. How could I forget?? Pathetic. What a pathetic bunch of legislators they are. And Specter should be ashamed of himself for keeping his “commitment” to pass this package. His “commitment” SHOULD be to the people of the country. Funny how these senators and representatives keep forgetting that…

On a different note, wild fires continue to rage in Australia in an area beset with drought for a decade. Now they believe the fires were the work of an arsonist. Sadly, almost 200 people have died, some in the most horrific ways imaginable (trapped in their cars). Many people have lost their homes in these fires. It is a senseless tragedy, and if I may, let us just take a moment and remember that we are all connected. Even in the midst of the frustrations with our political leaders, our own economic or health concerns, let us remember that others are suffering, too, or have lost their lives, through no fault of their own. Rather, through an act, deliberate in nature, that has affected so many. And continues to do so, with thousands of firefighters working to squelch these flames. We are, all of us, connected.

My thoughts and prayers go out for those lost, and for those who have lost so much…May these fires be contained quickly, and with no more loss of life…

UPDATED: Hold onto your hats. I can’t wait till AARP takes a bite out of this guy’s butt. They will be standing in front of the White House with pitch forks and torches.

In mentioning ‘automated’ medical records which will make things “more efficient,” they didn’t explain exactly “How” that will happen. Well not to the public anyhow.

As you read on, you will thank Jesus (even if you don’t believe!) that Tom Daschle got his smarmy thieving butt thrown out of that HHS slot before he even sat his ethanol-scamming ass in his plushy chair. But that doesn’t mean he won’t be consulting. What scares me is Barack Obama was so adamant that he was Just What The Doctor Ordered.

Let’s take a look at what Tom Daschle and Barack Obama have planned for you in the ’stimulus” bill.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crises.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Yes you read that right.

Treatments will be “monitored” to make sure you don’t cost the government too much money if you are sick, Comrade.

Especially if you are kind of old. You know how old and disabled people are just such a drain on communist societies. Some leaders even eliminated them in the past. What was that guy’s name again?

Let’s face it, you can’t work for the Glorious Cause if you are old or sick.

So to recap, your government is going to make medical costs more efficient by deciding whether or not you deserve treatment. After all, sometimes you just have to deal with what life brings you. It’s all for the Glorious Cause you know. And just think: There will be nowhere you can go to “appeal” the decision. It will be final, Comrade.

Oh, and one more thing. Doctors who do not obey are not “meaningful users” will face stiff penalties. In other words, they can all stick their Hippocratic Oaths up their collective asses.

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

And just in case you have any doubts that you are no longer going to be allowed to grow old in Our Brave New World of Hopeless Change:

Elderly Hardest Hit

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

Well I suppose this is one way to “reform” social security. They can kill you first before you collect any of the money you put into it. But I can guarantee you one thing for sure: Your Dear Leaders won’t have any problem getting any treatment they need in a timely way. At your expense.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

These people are disgusting. The lowest form of scum.I suggest that to this bunch Change really means Hopelessness.

As for Tom Daschle and his “plans” for us: I wish him everything he deserves so long as it’s not good. And to use his own words, I hope it’s not “Pain Free” either.

This shit is downright evil. Congress and the White House: You are all animals. Why don’t you toss in Assisted Suicide too? Think of how “efficient” that would be! Say, I have an idea. Why don’t you go first when you get sick–and we’ll be right behind you!

Hope and Change. Indeed.

Oh, and one more thing: When can we expect Ted Kennedy to be “more accepting” of his condition and stop burdening the system with cost?

And it is to the pork included in both the Senate and House packages that Charles Krauthammer addressed so well in this article, The Fierce Urgency of Pork. Uh, yes. That certainly seems to be what Obama is peddling. It is HOW he is peddling it that caught Dr. Krauthammer’s attention:

“A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.”
– President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared “we have chosen hope over fear.” Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

Uh, yeah. There again, many of us knew that the Hope-y Change-y Rainbow Unicorn was a crock from the very beginning. I wonder how Oama’s followers felt about him using the word, “catastrophe”??? Oh, they probably found some way to make it okay in their brains that this is a far cry from much of his campaign rhetoric. Whatever. Kind of like they did when it came to many of the people Obama nominated to be in his Administration:

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn’t understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn’t what’s illegal, but what’s legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.

He’d been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he’s not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don’t get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.

At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal’s private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he’d come to Washington to upend.

Well, I think that pretty much sums it up. Shrug of the shoulders is about all we’re going to get from those who were SO certain Obama was going to bring real change to Washington, D.C.

How about this, then:

And yet more damaging to Obama’s image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama’s name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It’s not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It’s not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It’s the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus — and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress’s own budget office says won’t be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

Anything, Obama followers? Anything?? *Crickets* That’s just sad, really. You bought his stupid message based on NOTHING but a clever marketer, and leave us with this crap:

Not just to abolish but to create something new — a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the “fierce urgency of now” includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.

Thanks tons for that.

Krauthammer concludes:

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting “planted” for “ready to market” would mean a windfall garnered from a new “bonus depreciation” incentive.

After Obama’s miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell — and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Well, maybe for some in the media to finally open their eyes, but as long as his followers are content for Nancy Pelosi to concoct a “Stimulus” bill that gives money to every little pet project House members can think of, and as long as they are willing to look the other way when people like Geithner take over the IRS, well, I think it may take longer yet before they wake up fully to reality. But I hope Dr. Krauthammer is right. I hope, too, that our elected officials will cut out the crapola that is in this bill, and do right by US, and not their pet projects or to appease Obama.

All I can say is, I am more than ready for the awakening.

Consider, for example, that The One promised a new way of doing business in Washington but is responsible for managing the vetting of prospective nominees that green-lights not one but three tax cheats. Instead of showing them the door and finding someone smart enough to know that, if they make more than $200,000, they ought to hire an accountant, Barack signs off on their nominations. (Maybe it is okay to not pay taxes and hold public office in Chicago).

It is only when the press gets wind of the facts that Barack and his team realize they have a problem. Sorry, this is not a “new way of doing business in Washington.” It is the same damn thing.

Barack and his team are acting like every other politician who has taken up residence in the White House–they initially decided to look the other way and excuse the inexcusable. While I credit Barack for admitting his mistake, it is a mistake he should not have made. Unfortunately, it appears that this is not an isolated event.

Victor Davis Hanson, in his typically understated fashion, offers up a list of warning signs and lays part of the blame laser-focused on the lap of the media for abetting the disastrous choice of the American people, so desperate for a “savior” from the Republican disaster, that they bet it all on a naive political neophyte:

Some of us have been warning that it was not healthy for the U.S. media to have deified rather than questioned Obama, especially given that they tore apart Bush, ridiculed Palin, and caricatured Hillary. And now we can see the results of their two years of advocacy rather than scrutiny.

The proof is so obvious:

No matter his protestations that he alone made the decision, it’s clear that former Senator Tom Daschle was summarily dumped, and Steve Clemons hints that Rahm Emanuel had a hand in it (”Many of Daschle’s camp are quite furious with Obama’s chief of staff.”) Clemons also argues that, in typical Democrats’ fashion, they gave up the fight long before they needed to.

General Anthony Zinni, who was already preparing for his departure to Iraq as its new ambassador, is left hanging by the White House. The puzzled general finally called up Gen. Jones, Obama’s National Security Advisor, and “was told that Christopher Hill, the outgoing assistant secretary of State for East Asia, was getting the job.” [SEE ALSO: Laura Rozen's "General Zinni gets undiplomatic treatment from Obama team" and related Memeorandum-listed stories.]

Gen. Zinni said no explanation was given. “That kind of bothered me,” he said. “I was told that I had it.”

What the hell? And now we have more distressing news coming out on Obama’s nominee to head Commerce, Sen. Judd Gregg.

The arch-conservative New Hampshire senator, as I wrote yesterday about a report in CQ Politics, “voted in favor of abolishing the agency as a member of the Budget Committee and on the Senate floor in 1995.”

Now we find out, via Time’s Mark Halperin, that Gregg had “ties to the disgraced lobbyist” Jack Abramoff. The White House is sloughing off the problem, even though Halperin points out that “a former legislative aide [of Gregg] is allegedly ‘Staffer F’ cited in a guilty plea last week by a former Abramoff deputy.”

The left hand is clearly not in touch with the right hand.

How did General Jones know that General Zinni was not the choice for Ambassador to Iraq, yet no one in the White House disabused Gen. Zinni of his justified assumption that he had the job?

How did no one in the White House and the very large vetting staff not clear Daschle’s tax problems and his relationships to for-profit health care companies?

How did no one in the White House not know that Gregg had voted to demolish the agency that he’s now been picked to oversee? Or that he has ties to Jack Abramoff?

Larry Johnson made a great point last night in his story, for which he took some heat, “Let’s Give Barack Credit“:

Did you catch Barack telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “I screwed up.” Damn, is that refreshing. After eight years of George Bush never admitting to any mistakes (even though they were numerous and glaring) it does appear that President Obama may be serious about this change thing.

However, the sole thing that matters after you admit you made a mistake is if you change your OWN behavior and that of your staff.

It’s disturbing to read Steve Clemons’ report about (1) the ease with which Democrats concede defeat and (2) the behavior of Rahm Emanuel, the man on whom Obama must most depend:

Obama seems to be replicating the pattern — conceding defeat on Tom Daschle, one of the people most responsible for actually creating the Obama political machine — and on the very same day yielding a senior cabinet position at the Department of Commerce not to a leading business official or Democratic Congressman or Governor — but rather giving it to Judd Gregg who voted 14 years ago to abolish the Commerce Department.

People will be parsing for some time Tom Daschle’s missteps with his taxes, and why he wasn’t vetted more by the Obama team, and whether Rahm Emanuel was part of the game knifing Daschle from behind, and what the political upper crust in Washington sees as “normal” when they leave office — but mostly, this was about the opposing team taking down one of Obama’s most important chess pieces.

This was all about Obama, about humbling him, about dividing progressives over whether to support or oppose Daschle.

What we see are two interesting things. First, we see that the divisions between the political franchises inside the Obama camp are fraught with tension and anger now. Many of Daschle’s camp are quite furious with Obama’s chief of staff.

Yes, Obama has been humbled. Perhaps. If he’s learned.

But the news about the “tension and anger” within the Obama camp is disturbing. For that to be cured, a strong and experienced leader is needed, and is Obama up to the job?

And if he isn’t, is his staff? Hell, his press office can’t even get out their daily press briefing videos and transcripts. You try to get one promptly, and you’ll see what I mean. (Meanwhile, over at State, Hillary’s press staff, like clockwork, posts the daily press briefing video and the transcript with lightning speed.) Victor Davis Hanson declares Robert Gibbs a “nightmare”:

Gibbs as press secretary is a Scott McClellan nightmare that won’t go away, given his long McClellan-like relationship with Obama (McClellan should have been fired on day hour one on the job). Blaming Fox News for Obama’s calamities is McClellan to the core and doesn’t work. He already reminds me of Reverend Wright’s undoing at the National Press Club—and he will get worse.

And the Columbia Journalism Review’s blog, Campaign Desk is as skeptical about Obama’s press office as I am:

Who’s Undercutting Obama?
For the moment, at least, it’s his press office

[...]

While it is too early to judge just how this will work out, the early signs are troubling. And interviews with a dozen Washington reporters indicate that the Obama press operation tends to embrace friendly questions, while treating skeptical questions as not worth their time or, worse, as coming from an enemy. [...]

Questions about whether Shapiro [a White House press office staffer] knows the difference between off-the-record, background, deep background, and on-the-record did not get asked, because Shapiro made it clear he had no interest in answering anything about how the Obama press secretary’s office is operating and what its tone will be. He said questions should be submitted in writing by e-mail to nshapiro@who.eop.gov. I sent Shapiro an e-mail outlining the contours of what would be covered in an interview, but have not received a response as of this writing, the following day.

Shapiro did say that there are press office numbers to call beside 202-456-2580, which has been the main White House press office number for decades. “You should have used one of them,” he said.

And those numbers are? Shapiro said these numbers would be made public soon. (Thoughts of the illogic made famous by Kafka, Catch-22, and Lewis Carroll’s King of Hearts come to mind here.) But there is more to this than just the answering, or not answering, of telephones and questions. [...]

The Obama administration is also editing briefing transcripts. So far it posts only snippets of some White House briefings at whitehouse.gov. Shapiro promised that would be corrected soon.

Politicians make choices and have to live with them. How they deal with journalists—especially whether they are candid and direct about dealing in facts—sets a tone that will influence the administration’s ability to communicate its messages, especially those Obama messages that run counter to deeply ingrained cultural myths about the economy, taxes, and the role of government. … [Read all -- it's worth it.]

Victor Davis Hanson has a litany of Obama’s failures.

One which struck me was Obama’s utter naivete in expecting the Republicans, over a series of luncheons, cocktail parties and Superbowl chips and dips, to warm to him — to find him inescapably charming and the answer to their prayers too. But these grizzled GOP veterans know far too much about D.C., about legislation, and about how to manipulate the malleable Democrats to ever be “touched” by the Obamatopia that sadly overcame millions of dreamy-headed Americans.

Obama seems to be the kind of guy who loves the campaign, the chase, the hunt, and the all-glorious win. But he is most definitely NOT the kind of guy who likes the day-to-day tough drudgery and decision-making.

Like many of his adoring fans at Daily Kos, he wants what he wants when he wants it. The hard work part of governing — the grinding job of building longterm alliances and forging sensible compromises and the long hours involved in accomplishing all of that, just do not appeal to these people. They want to snap their fingers, and have what they want.

I have never seen in Obama the capacity for that kind of work. I still do not.

I think that that is one reason that Obama made the disastrous decision to let Nancy Pelosi and David Obey control the writing of the stimulus packaging bill. That bill should have been closely overseen and scrutinized in the White House, and have received the most cold-hearted “due diligence” possible.

But Obama and team did not want to do that hard work. They thought they could pass off the job to Nancy and crew, a truly frightening decision given Nancy’s penchant for pet far-left projects that drew immediate criticisms from so many that the Republicans voted a unanimous NAY and even 11 Democrats in conservative districts also had to vote NAY in order to keep their seats.

Now, we have a mess of a stimulus plan that is so bad that Obama is not likely, at present, to even bring in the few Republicans he needs for the bill to pass the Senate. Even reliable types like Olympia Snow are rejecting the bill in its present form. She has directly asked Obama to remove the unnecessary and pork-driven parts of the bill; he’s said he did, but he has not. And she knows it.

And, while they fiddle, and Obama doesn’t do the hard work necessary, the American people — and the world’s people — are left with a worsening recession and increasing joblessness and worsening opportunities for small-, medium-, and large-sized businesses of all types.

You’ll have to read Victor David Hansen’s article in full, but here’s the closing:

This is quite serious. I can’t recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century (far worse than Bill Clinton’s initial slips). Obama immediately must lower the hope-and-change rhetoric, ignore Reid/Pelosi, drop the therapy, and accept the tragic view that the world abroad is not misunderstood but quite dangerous. And he must listen on foreign policy to his National Security Advisor, Billary, and the Secretary of Defense. If he doesn’t quit the messianic style and perpetual campaign mode, and begin humbly governing, then he will devolve into Carterism—angry that the once-fawning press betrayed him while we the people, due to our American malaise, are to blame.

Have we anointed a messiah who sinks the minute he’s put out on the water? Have we hired a weatherman who can’t tell which way the wind is blowing? Have we chosen an orator who can only parrot the words of hired scribes, but lacks the depth of experience to understand the peril that lies before us? When I look at Barack I fear I am seeing a younger, but equally feckless clone of Jimmy Carter.

Perhaps this explains why he ended up in an elementary school. The naive, joyous laughter of schoolchildren provided a welcomed escape from the burdens of poor decision making.

OF NOTE: Steve operates his blog much as we do, welcoming diverse viewpoints for publication (and we don’t censor comments by those who disagree with us either!, as long as they don’t indulge in name-calling, which goes for both sides). So, today, Steve published a guest article, “Chris Nelson: Daschle Had to Go.” Allowing, even encouraging, diverse POVs on blogs is so much more stimulating than the Daily Kossack style of censorship that only allows nodding heads to participate. That’s our policy at NoQuarter, and it’s Steve’s too.

During the battle over John Bolton’s Senate confirmation to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations, a post that Bolton ultimately achieved through presidential recess appointment rather than by Senate vote, I noticed a peculiar difference between leading Democrats and leading Republicans.

On the Sunday morning talk shows, leading Democrats kept saying that while they weren’t big John Bolton fans, ultimately the President would win the fight over the confirmation of America’s leading pugnacious nationalist.

At various times during the 21-month long struggle, then Senator Joseph Biden, Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator Richard Durbin, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, and Senator Patrick Leahy all said on political shows that Bolton would get confirmed. To his credit, Durbin actually withdrew his statement and issued a release through this blog commending those working hard to stop Bolton’s confirmation.

Dems were conceding before they needed to — and the Republicans, through the entire battle, were declaring victory even though there was dissension in their own ranks and they were losing the confirmation war.

Obama seems to be replicating the pattern — conceding defeat on Tom Daschle, one of the people most responsible for actually creating the Obama political machine — and on the very same day yielding a senior cabinet position at the Department of Commerce not to a leading business official or Democratic Congressman or Governor — but rather giving it to Judd Gregg who voted 14 years ago to abolish the Commerce Department.

People will be parsing for some time Tom Daschle’s missteps with his taxes, and why he wasn’t vetted more by the Obama team, and whether Rahm Emanuel was part of the game knifing Daschle from behind, and what the political upper crust in Washington sees as “normal” when they leave office — but what this was mostly about was the opposing team taking down one of Obama’s most important chess pieces.

This was all about Obama, about humbling him, about dividing progressives over whether to support or oppose Daschle.

What we see are two interesting things. First, we see that the divisions between the political franchises inside the Obama camp are fraught with tension and anger now. Many of Daschle’s camp are quite furious with Obama’s chief of staff.

And the Republican opposition, which has appeared of late to be weak and inchoate. . .isn’t.

– Steve Clemons

(Above) Tom Daschle shows his former colleagues the apparent size of his tax debt

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately applying for jobs. Millions of Americans are doing the same thing. It’s a never-ending stream of postings, applications and online forms. You have to disclose all sorts of personal information, just so some algorithm can pull out some keys and decide whether a human resources assistant will even glance at your application. The computer program is looking to disqualify you from the get-go. This way, when an actually employed human looks at whatever candidates are presented to them, there is a good chance at seeing people who are qualified to take the position.

I bring this up, because it appears that President Barack Obama’s administration has not quite mastered the vetting of job applicants as well as the thousands of American businesses that use Monster and Career Builder. Most job applications ask job seekers about crimes they may have committed. Many applicants intentionally leave this blank and hope that background checks will not reveal past transgressions. It rarely works. It is too easy in this day and age to do a little internet snooping and discover anyone’s dark secrets.

So, let’s say you are a job applicant. You fill out the forms and everything looks great. Then, your employer discovers that you have already defrauded the company you are seeking employment from out of $45,000 or even $140,000. Do you think you are getting that job? Any employer that applies minimal amounts of good business practices will turn to one of the hundreds of other applicants who just happened not to steal from them.

That’s where we are with Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner and Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle. One hired and one about to be by the very employer they stole from. Yes, many Americans commit tax fraud every year. It’s almost a badge of honor to find ways to avoid paying the IRS. Here’s the problem, when you are an employee of the U.S. Government, not paying your taxes is not only tax fraud, it is stealing from your employer. Embezzlement, white collar crime.

To make matters worse, Geithner now oversees the Department of the Treasury and thus the Internal Revenue Service. He is in charge of enforcing the tax code. I have a feeling that if I put on a job application for a pharmaceutical sales executive position that I have a history of addiction to prescription drugs and have obtained them by illegal means, that I am not going to get the job.

As for Daschle, as Senate Majority Leader his taxes were looked at through a microscope for years. He would not overlook little things like a car and driver worth more than a quarter of a million dollars. It’s clear that once out of the Senate he thought certain things would not be noticed. In other words, he had no problem defrauding the U.S. Government, embezzling from his former and possibly future employer.

What does all this say about the folks doing the hiring? President Barack Obama has been telling us for two years, that he will change the culture in Washington. “Change has come”, “Hope and Change”, we’ve heard it time and time again. It appears that giving a cabinet position to Tom Daschle is no different than if George W. Bush decided to give one to Trent Lott. I can only imagine the exploding veins in Keith Olbermann’s neck if that happened.

The chances for hope and change are slim and none. And slim just pulled out of town in the back of Tom Daschle’s limo.

UPDATE #3 (uh, did Obama know this when he decided on Gregg?): “Gregg Voted to Kill Commerce Before He Agreed to Lead It”, CQ Politics, February 2, 2009:

President Obama’s new candidate to run the Commerce Department voted in favor of abolishing the agency as a member of the Budget Committee and on the Senate floor in 1995.

Sen. Judd Gregg , R-N.H., whose nomination was expected to be announced Tuesday, also worked in the Senate to trim the department’s budget as head of the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee.

Gregg’s 1995 votes were cast for the fiscal 1996 budget resolution, a nonbinding blueprint that outlined the GOP’s fiscal priorities after Republicans won full control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

The Senate version of the controversial measure envisioned spending cuts of more than $960 billion, almost half of it from Medicare and Medicaid. [MORE INDICATIONS that health care will not be reformed, but may be cut back? Just asking! - Susan] Democratic efforts to amend it were uniformly rebuked by a united GOP majority on the Budget Committee.

Ultimately, the Commerce Department survived, and Gregg has since shown more interest than most of his Republican colleagues in funding some of its agencies, particularly the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Gregg also fought President Bill Clinton’s efforts to increase funding for the Commerce Department to administer the 2000 census. Indeed, Gregg’s commitment to basic functions of the department has been questioned at times.

“He was generally pretty harsh on them and not really interested in their programs, especially the commerce side of things,” said a Democratic appropriations aide. … Read all.

Update #1: Social Security and Medicare do require some adjustments, but aren’t we all grateful that the Republicans never managed to turn over Social Security monies to private account investments in the stock markets and mutual funds?!?!?! Social Security especially offers some future protection for the many people in our country who are stuck in dead-end, minimum-wage jobs and who will never be able to save enough to be able to provide income in their old age. And many of these minimum wage workers do the most physically taxing kinds of jobs, which are very hard on the body, and age them sooner than those who get white-collar jobs. As one Democratic senator said on an old West Wing I watched the other night, “What do we do about sheet metal workers whose knees and backs are shot by the time they’re 55?” We can’t bump up the age much more.

If we do anything at all, I’d advise we exclude those who are wealthy and have enough annual income in retirement that that SS monthly check is not a loss. And Medicare? It is so efficiently managed that its administrative costs run around 1.5-3% annually — amazing for a huge government-run enterprise. But it is far from free. The necessary supplementals can cost seniors at least $350 per month. And god help those who hit the “donut holes” in the Plan D prescription drug plans — they’re left with hundreds of dollars of expenses until the end of the year.

What scares me most is that President Obama doesn’t give a damn about any of this. During the campaigns, we TRIED to tell people this Obama’s economic advisers are in favor of privatizing Social Security but those who dared, like RonK Seattle, were summarily kicked out of true-believer blogs like Daily Kos. And what also frightens me is that we’ve lost Senator Daschle over a tax problem when he was one of the best-informed people anywhere on health care plans. It’s a tragic loss that may ruin our chance to improve health care in this nation. Yes, he screwed up. Damn, he wasn’t perfect, and yes he’d taken advantage of his Senate experience to make big bucks.

BUT, think about this? Who among any of us hasn’t got “skeletons” in OUR closets that would prevent us from confirmation, if the requirement is nothing short of sainthood? This is getting ridiculous. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone …. (Probably not accurate, but we heathens can’t quote the Bible perfectly.) But god we needed Daschle’s expertise. Obama should have FOUGHT for Daschle, but instead he did the easiest thing politically — he threw Daschle under the bus, just like he does most everyone who causes him any problems. [Update 2: The adage about "throwing the first stone" works if we consider the totality of what a man or woman has done, but Obama is the one who falls WAY too far for me. Not only has he never accomplished anything substantive that truly helped citizens, he's rarely if ever tried, and has only busted his ass when he wanted to win a campaign.]

The PREVAILING VIEW is that Daschle still had the votes to win confirmation, so what happened? I’ll bet you anything that Obama chickened out, and forced him to withdraw because he CAN’T TAKE THE HEAT of standing up for the best nominee! Daschle will never say that, but I’m nearly sure of it.

NOW back to the original story I wrote late last night: I recall being impressed with Senator Gregg’s coherent, detailed explanations of negotiations last fall at the height of the presidential election race to forge a negotiated agreement for Bush’s economic rescue plan. And I’ve heard that he’s a “budget wonk,” which is an asset. But I just ran across this article, and am bringing it to your attention solely because you have to ask yourselves what kind of a real Democrat is Barack Obama? Or is he one? Or does he care?

Is he a fool? Or a callous deal-maker, the kind who consorted for years with Tony Rezko who stole millions of dollars of the hard-earned money of taxpayers and failed to keep his bond with the people, to improve heretofore public housing and left it to rot, to be foreclosed, to be uninhabitable while his friend, the ever-ambitious Barack Obama glanced away?

Is Barack Obama a fool, I ask again? Who else would appoint a man to be Secretary of Commerce who was planning to vote against Obama’s stimulus package, as was Gregg?

Or is Obama — as I feared throughout the contests because what little of a record the man does have suggests it strongly — a callous deal-maker who is manifestly untouched by the real lives of real American citizens and who only looks for the adulation and the next campaign dollar?

Would he really appoint a Secretary of Commerce in a Democratic party administration whose idea of improving the economy is to create “a commission of center-right insiders operating in secret and circumventing Congress in order to destroy Social Security and Medicare”?

Say what you want about the Democratic party but, at its finest, it has been about creating a harbor to protect our nation’s citizens.

Good men and women of the Democratic party fought the toughest battles against both giants of industry and hard-right conservatives to give Americans the safety nets of Social Security and Medicare.

I am reading a book about one such man, who served in the House from 1936 to 1944 and in the Senate from 1944 to 1981. Warren Magnuson, my representative and senator from the State of Washington, long before I was even born, looked out for me and you. He not only helped Franklin D. Roosevelt pass his great bills but he went on to create and pass bills that forever have changed all of our lives for the better, from the Consumer Protection Act to numerous environmental protection measures. Here are some of his words, in 1936, when he first ran for the House, and through a lingering Depression:

“Roosevelt has brought order from chaos,” he said. “The Democratic policy is water power without profit, schools for all children, programs to cure unemployment. … (page 56, “New Deal, New World,” from the book, “Warren G. Magnuson and The Shaping of Twentieth Century America.”)

Water power without profit? Yes, that had to be fought for. Schools for all children? Yes, that too had to be fought for.

The Washington state Democratic party platform, at its convention over which he presided, called for:

a social security program, unemployment compensation, aid to dependent children, public health programs, collective bargaining and labor arbitration, and federal aid for dams and irrigation.

Unemployment compensation? Yes that too had to be fought for. Public health programs? That too. Federal aid for dams and irrigation (which has made possible the great farming lands of the west)? Yes, those too had to be fought for.

And then there is social security. The “third rail” of politics, as it is sometimes called.

We know that Obama is a novice who skimmed the surface of the U.S. Senate fleetingly, never bothered even to learn all the rules, and who used his office solely as a springboard to the presidency. We know that such a man, with the ego to run with so little to show for his life, save a couple political victories and a best-selling biography, had to have the most exceptional nerve to run for the most powerful office in the world.

Obama touts his “bipartisan” approach to politics as if it makes him fly with the angels, above the blood sport that is really politics. There’s something naive about his approach. He played his “bipartisan” hand so overtly that the House Republicans were only too eager to show him how that works in their town, with nary a “bipartisan” vote from their side of the aisle.

It was almost as if he thought he could win over the Republicans the same way he had made women faint at his rallies and once-sensible people fall for his promises as if he were the next messiah.

Only those grizzled, cynical GOP veterans know the system in D.C., and they are not that easily won over, nor will they ever be won over by his supposed charm and charisma.

And now he’s bringing in another Republican, whose true allegiances are to his party and his GOP comrades in the Senate and House to oversee the nation’s commerce. But he’s doing so without the requisite experience and knowledge, himself, to see if Judd Gregg is on the up-and-up with him, or will be leading him down a path to the destruction of all that those courageous men and women fought for back in the 1930s and 1940s.

And Franklin Roosevelt was so much more than Barack Obama. Roosevelt truly did “change” Washington, D.C. From the book again (Magnuson’s nickname was “Maggie”), in 1936:

Maggie would sit alongside another freshman, Texas Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson was twenty-eight; Magnuson, thirty-two. …

This was Franklin Roosevelt’s Washington, not Herbert Hoover’s — a city in fundamental change from the center of a laissez-faire capitalist federation to a seat of government suddenly concerned about every aspect of American society from Wall Street to Main Street. It was more the Washington, D.C. we know today, a strong central government–…

This was the Neal Deal government, a consequence of its rescue of capitalism. …

Years later, when asked to explain his and Johnson’s devotion to the New Deal, Magnuson said, “All of us are creatures of our times. We needed to do something [in the 1930s] no matter what it was called. It was a modest approach.

A modest approach. What an understatement. He and Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt changed our nation forever, and for the better.

Nowhere in the Obama “stimulus package” do we see any great programs such as we saw in what Magnuson mentioned.

And nowhere in Obama’s haphazard piling on of experts do we see even a glimmer of a coherent plan that will not only lift the recession/depression but will also reinvigorate this nation and the rest of the world.

It’s late. I’m done writing. There’s more to say. Another time.

Breaking News! (6:10 a.m., 02/02/09): “Daschle ‘embarrassed’ over tax issues” (That makes it all better, right? Nothing to see here anymore, so let’s just move along now.)

[NOTE FROM LARRY JOHNSON (Feb. 1, 2009) -- Right on, Uppity. Lady, you read my mind. Rather than write a separate article I wanted to weigh in at the start. We cannot take Barack Obama seriously as a "candidate of change" when he winks and nods at the bullshit perpetuated by Washington insiders like Tom Daschle. Daschle may not have been a formally registered lobbyist, BUT BY GOD HE WAS A LOBBYIST! And a wealthy one at that. If it walks and quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck. He became a millionaire peddling his previous status as the majority leader of the Senate to folks in the health care industry.

Are we to believe that Tom Daschle is a moron? That he does not understand that when someone gives you a limo and a driver worth a $250,000 that it is income? That when someone gives you more than $80,000 in a year it is income you must report on your taxes? Yet he forgot? Sure Barack, you want change. Yet you are enabling the very thing people wanted to get rid of. And just like George Bush, your loyal followers don't give a shit and will excuse the inexcusable. If you were serious about fixing Washington you would pull Dashcle's nomination. It is now clear you are not serious. Just another politician playing the Washington game.]

Besides making a killing on ethanol and increasing world starvation, Tom Daschle is just one more tax thief. He’s perfect for the job!

“Yesterday I cheated this much!”

Taxes for thee, not me.

While more people in the world reach starvation levels due to a shortage of corn and the tripling of the cost of other grains, Corn King Tom Daschle has been ironically tapped to be the Secretary of “Health and Human Services”.

If that isn’t ironic unto itself, he is another thief who scurried to pay back taxes after a nomination tap. This is the same thief who, when he was in office, called corporations Benedict Arnold for not paying taxes.

The Senate Finance committee will meet Monday to review the tax records of former Sen. Tom Daschle, President Obama’s nominee for secretary of health and human services.

Oh make me laugh will you? We all know the worth of your Kabuki “reviews”.

You guys would confirm Dracula if Obama decided he wanted to put him in charge of the blood bank.

Why don’t you thieves just cut the crap and do a blanket approval of everybody so we don’t have to listen to your lying BS on TV for a week? That way, Tony Rezko could be put in charge of HUD from his jail cell.

You all make me sick. You have no ethics, no competence, no loyalty to America and no conscience. And you’re malicous in abuse of your power. You all belong in jail with room mates named Bubba.

According to a committee memo obtained Friday by CNN, the group’s concerns include the use of a limousine and driver that Daschle didn’t disclose on his income taxes and nonpayment of taxes on more than $80,000 he earned in consulting fees after leaving the senate.

Daschle also apparently once filed a tax form listing charitable donations to organizations that did not qualify for a deduction, according to the memo.

…snip…

Daschle, 61, of South Dakota, served in the Senate from 1987 to 2005 and served as Democratic leader from 1995 until after he was defeated in a re-election bid in 2004.

I always said that the people didn’t UnElect Tom Daschle for nothing. Now he’s going to be put in charge of that big huge black money hole known as Health Care. These cheaters and thieves always prefer appointments to slots where there are the best opportunities to stuff untraceable money in their pockets.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that Daschle brought the issues to the committee’s attention himself and that Obama is “confident” he will be confirmed.

So am I. Now why is that?

More Dick Cheney replacement$. Meet the new majority. Same as the old majority.

America, you are so pwned.

**Update: Total back taxes suddenly paid: $128,203.