Turns out I am not the only one who wonders why Obama continues to get a free pass for actions that, had Bush done them, would be front page news (and again, I have NO love lost for Bush - absolutely zero, but fair is fair). Josh Gerstein of Politico had these same questions, about which he wrote in this article, What If Bush Had Done That?. Indeed:

A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.

Snubbing the Dalai Lama.

Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.

Freezing out a TV network.

Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.

President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.

What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.

It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.

Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?

The media’s “echo chamber”? That is a kind reference for what they are really doing, or rather aren’t doing: their jobs. Conservatives aren’t the only ones questioning why this is happening. Anyone who truly cares about the our democracy and the state of journalism in this country are asking, too. But they do ask a good question:

And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?

“We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,” former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. “The watchdogs are curled up around his feet, sleeping soundly. … There are countless examples: some silly, some serious.”

Indeed, Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. But it’s not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the president often gets kid-glove treatment from the press, fellow Democrats and, particularly, interest groups on the left — Bush’s loudest critics, Obama’s biggest backers.

But others say there’s a larger phenomenon at work — in the story line the media wrote about Obama’s presidency. For Bush, the theme was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again.

Obama’s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington. So the negatives that sprung up around Obama — like a sense that he was more flash than substance — track what negative coverage he’s received, captured in a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit that made fun of his lack of accomplishments in office.

“There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.

Democrats find the complaints of Obama “getting a pass” hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush — particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding.

“As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory.”

There are signs the friendly tone toward Obama is ebbing. Case in point: a front-page story in The New York Times noting that Obama’s all-male basketball games drew fire from the head of the National Organization for Women, who called the games “troubling.”

I agree that Bush seemed to be treated with kit gloves, way, way too much for my liking. The media does seem to enjoy determining who our next president will be. But even Bush’s treatment pales in comparison to the lovefest the MSM has had for Obama.

So yes, they are now asking why Obama excludes women (though he has now tried to rectify that by asking ONE woman, Melody Barnes, to play golf with him) in his games? We have known for ages that often, it is on the golf course or basketball court that favors are curried or power is amassed, hence the desire for women to achieve membership in numerous country clubs across the country. Oh, and Obama’s response to the NY Time’s articles highlighting that women were excluded? “Bunk, ” he said. Uh, yeah, no. It isn’t, President Obama.

There are too many examples of just how Obama has been allowed to skate free:

But here are other stories in which Obama seems to have gotten a pass:

New Orleans

As a candidate, Obama railed against the Bush administration for abandoning and then neglecting the people of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He made five campaign trips to the city.

But as president, Obama waited almost nine months before visiting the Big Easy, spent less than four hours on the ground there and then jetted to San Francisco for a $3 million Democratic fundraiser.

“Don’t judge anybody on the amount of time that they’ve spent there. Judge only what this administration promised that they would do, what they’ve done every day and what they’re continuing to work on,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said, pointing to positive reviews of the federal government’s efforts under Obama.

For their part, Democrats can’t see how Bush officials can muster much umbrage over anything related to New Orleans, given how the Republican administration handled the initial response to Katrina.

Forget “Bush Officials.” How about us plain ol’ Americans? We’re pretty pissed off about it, too. Just saying. A biggie is this:

Managing The Press

When the Obama administration moved in recent weeks to isolate and disparage Fox News as a wing of the Republican Party, there were few immediate howls of outrage — even from Fox’s fellow journalists in the media.

Press defenders and First Amendment advocates who jumped on the Bush administration for using military analysts to shape war coverage reacted with a yawn to the White House’s announcement that it had deemed Fox to be not a “legitimate news organization.”

“Had I said about MSNBC what the Obama White House said about Fox, the media uproar would still be going on,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as Bush’s press secretary until 2003. “I instinctively would have known … the media would have leapt to their feet to defend them. I’m shocked it’s not happening now.”

One press veteran agreed. “If George Bush had taken on MSNBC, what would have happened?” said Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s one place you can point to a real difference in how I’d imagine Bush would be treated.”

No freakin’ kidding. People would be screaming their fool heads off about free speech. But the Obamam crowd? They just jump on the Fox bashing bandwagon. Nice.

And this is a big one, too:

Politicizing the White House

Throughout the Bush administration, liberal critics warned that the hand of Bush political adviser Karl Rove was spreading politics into all corners of government. Reporters were on alert for any sign that politics was infecting the work of federal agencies. One top appointee got in hot water for allegedly asking agency officials to work to “help our candidates” across the country.

So some Bush aides went nearly apoplectic earlier this month when they spotted Gibbs and Obama’s political guru, David Axelrod, in photos of a Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan policy.

“Oh, the howling and screaming that would have happened if Karl Rove was sitting in on even a deputies-level meeting where strategy was being hammered out. People would have just gone ballistic,” said Peter Feaver, a former White House aide for both Bush and Bill Clinton.

Also, in about nine months, Obama has already attended more than two dozen fundraising events, while Bush did only six in his first year in office, according to a tally by CBS’s Mark Knoller.

Gibbs said Obama had to do more to raise a similar amount of money, since the kinds of soft-money fundraisers Bush did early on were banned. “This president … doesn’t accept money from PACs or lobbyists and doesn’t allow lobbyists to give at fundraisers that he’s at, as well,” Gibbs added.

Uh, yeah, sure, okay, Mr. Mealy Mouth Man. We all buy that one, right? Uh, yeah, no.

Then there is this one:

Dealing With Business, In Secret

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney endured years of criticism and lawsuits that stretched all the way to the Supreme Court over secret meetings Cheney’s Energy Task Force held with oil and gas companies. When the policy emerged, critics said Cheney was carrying water for the industry.

Obama pledged to hash out health care reform live on C-SPAN and excoriated Bush for kowtowing to the drug industry. But aides signed off on the drug industry’s agreement to find $80 billion in savings to support reform. However, Obama aides didn’t disclose that the agreement involved the White House promising that current health legislation wouldn’t include further cuts or give the government the right to negotiate over drug prices.

I admit, this did actually get a rise from a few folks, like Greg Palast. But that moment seems to have passed now. Now, people rarely mention it. Big surprise…

And another issue near and dear to many of us:

Toning Down Human Rights

During the campaign, Obama talked tough on China. While candidate Obama pushed Bush to take a hard line, President Obama hasn’t. Hoping to win China’s help on Iran and North Korea, Obama skipped a meeting with the Dalai Lama and said little when China undertook a violent crackdown in its largely Muslim Xinjiang region. The White House has pledged to meet with the Dalai Lama later.

And while candidate Obama warned Bush against a “reckless and cynical initiative [that] would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments,” President Obama’s envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, seemed to lay out a similar incentive-driven approach.

“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration. “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.” The White House backed away from Gration’s characterization of the strategy but did recently lay out a strategy of engaging with the Sudanese regime.

Obama snubbed the DALAI LAMA. C’mon already - THAT’S not going to get an outcry? He’s the DALAI LAMA, for pete’s sake! No? *Crickets*

Just for, um, fun:

Traveling And Recreating

In his campaign and as president, Bush was mocked for a lack of interest in all things foreign — seven minutes touring the Kremlin, 25 minutes at the Great Wall of China, before declaring, “Let’s go home.”

During a trip to Europe in June, Obama chastised German and French reporters for suggesting that he was snubbing those countries by making only brief stops in each. “There are only 24 hours in the day. And so there’s nothing to any of that speculation beyond us just trying to fit in what we could do on such a short trip,” he told reporters in Germany.

But after taking his wife out for an attention-grabbing date night, Obama promptly jetted back to Washington. Within about 90 minutes of arriving at the White House, the tightly scheduled president was on the move again — headed to Andrews Air Force Base to play nine holes of golf.

How quickly people change. If Bush had done ANY of these things, the HuffPo and Daily Kos crowds would have been going ballistic about it. But now that it’s THEIR guy, it’s peachy keen. Where is the sense of fair play? Where is the concept of right is right? No, all of that gets completely thrown out of the window if it is someone they actually LIKE.

That is just sad. While ethics can be situational, the similarities between Bush and Obama are glaring, as many of us said they were all along. To completely disregard any sense of decency because it’s their guy weakens their arguments about choosing him in the first place. It makes it crystal clear that this is about winning at all costs, and choosing someone with little more than a teleprompter to do so.

It weakens their arguments against Bush, too, though they will most likely never admit that. But it’s true. In this case, what’s god for the gander, is, well, good for the gander.

Maybe if the media actually starts to do its job (for instance, where are all of the photos of Obama playing golf all of the time? Or basketball? They never failed to show Bush playing or riding his bike.), maybe they will start to open their eyes. One can hope, anyway. In the meantime, it continues to be our job to hold Obama’s feet to the fire for decisions he makes, and doesn’t make. It is our job to hold up the glaring similarities between Bush and Obama. And do so we will…

Well, it turns out that figure of $1 million is just a little low. By $4 million dollars, that is. Holy smokes. In this article, ACORN Embezzlement Was $5 Million, LA Attorney General Says, that figure is revised way up, and not by a reporter, or a politician with an ax to grind, as ACORN would not doubt claim, but the State Attorney General:

Louisiana’s attorney general has broadened the scope of an investigation of ACORN to include a possible embezzlement of $5 million a decade ago within the community organization, five times more than previously reported.

ACORN Chief Executive Officer Bertha Lewis said the new reported amount is “completely false.”

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has been conducting an investigation of ACORN since June. He issued subpoenas in August seeking documents related to former ACORN International President Wade Rathke and his brother Dale Rathke, who kept the group’s books. Those subpoenas were focused on possible ACORN violations for non-payment of employee withholding taxes, obstructing justice and violating the Employee Retirement Security Act. No charges have been made.

The attorney general had inquired in June into an alleged embezzlement within ACORN that happened 10 years ago. The group last year dealt with an internal dispute and a lawsuit involving accusations that Dale Rathke made nearly $1 million in improper credit card charges in 1999 and 2000. The brother and a donor repaid the money.

Did you catch that? A “donor” helped pay back the money. Dale was not formally charged, nor did he have to spend any time in prison. None. Now we know it was so much more money than previously thought:

Caldwell said last month that the statute of limitations presented obstacles to prosecutors taking action on the embezzlement, and that his investigation was not focused on that issue. The subpoena issued Monday changed the tone of the investigation and put a new emphasis on the embezzlement issue.

“Current high-ranking members of ACORN have publicly acknowledged that embezzlement did in fact occur, but the exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on Oct. 17, 2008, by Bertha Lewis and Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5 million, ” the new subpoena says.

The subpoena says, “It is still unclear if some of the monies embezzled are from state, federal or private funds.”

The subpoena requests documents from Citizens Consulting Inc., a financial arm of ACORN, and from various accounting and legal consultants in New Orleans. Investigators are trying to verify the issues raised in the subpoena.

“We’re going to follow the evidence where it leads us and try to do the right thing,” said David Caldwell, head of the attorney general’s public corruption and special prosecutions divisions. “We are actively investigating the case, whatever the outcome might be. This is something we are devoting our full attention to.”

Wade Rathke, who was in Bangkok, Thailand, on Monday, referred questions to ACORN officials. Lewis said she would comment further after she and ACORN attorneys had a chance to review the subpoena.

ACORN board member Vanessa Gueringer, chairwoman of the Lower 9th Ward Chapter, said she had not seen the subpoena but that the accusation about the larger embezzlement was untrue.

“I believe it is another lie, another witch hunt, ” Gueringer said.

ACORN, which provides counseling on housing and other assistance to low and moderate income families, has been reeling from national negative publicity in recent weeks. Actions have been taken on the federal level and by many states, including Louisiana, to end public contracts with the group. (Robert Travis Scott can be reached at rscott@timespicayune.com or 225.342.4197.)

Now that’s some Major League Denial going on there, isn’t it?? The Attorney General of the State isn’t just making stuff up. He has actually been INVESTIGATING ACORN, and rightly so.

Let’s just do the math here. ACORN has received $53 Million of our taxpaying dollars. Dale Rathke embezzled $5 million from ACORN. Sure they get donations, but honestly - you don’t think some of that money was OURS???? And why is he NOT IN PRISON?? That’s what I’d like to know. Hopefully, he will be soon, thanks to the LA State Attorney General.

And that begs the question - where has everyone ELSE been on this issue? It’s not like it wasn’t public knowledge, and not like it hasn’t been reported in major newspapers across the country. I’m glad someone is doing his job.

And speaking of the Rathke Brothers, don’t forget that Wade is also the one who co-founded the SEIU, yes, the union that held California hostage. Well, you are not going to believe where their name pops up in connection to the White House. Check out this video, beginning at the 1:45 minute mark:

Holy smokes. The SEIU is working with the Wite House and the NEA to spend YOUR/OUR money on propaganda.

And we thought the Bush Administration was bad about the whole propaganda thing…

“President Obama, I support the Americans’ outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing.”

– French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Sept. 24

When France chides you for appeasement, you know you’re scraping bottom. Just how low we’ve sunk was demonstrated by the Obama administration’s satisfaction when Russia’s president said of Iran, after meeting President Obama at the United Nations, that “sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable.”

You see? The Obama magic. Engagement works. Russia is on board. Except that, as The Post inconveniently pointed out, President Dmitry Medvedev said the same thing a week earlier, and the real power in Russia, Vladimir Putin, had changed not at all in his opposition to additional sanctions. And just to make things clear, when Iran then brazenly test-fired offensive missiles, Russia reacted by declaring that this newest provocation did not warrant the imposition of tougher sanctions.

I should add, I don’t have the same level of disdain for the French that some in this country have. In fact, I love France, and I love the people I have met there. I have not had the experience of French people looking down their noses at me because I’m American, even in Paris. In small villages in which I’ve traveled, even with my crappy French (I took Spanish in school), and the limited English the shop keepers had, we each worked hard to understand each other. One woman didn’t speak a word of English, but would engage in pantomime (I’m sure there’s a joke there about the French and mimes) to get her point across, AND she was funny, to boot. So, while I appreciate that some people have not had this experience, I won’t jump on the French bashing bandwagon. Honestly, I can’t wait until I get to go back there.

Back to the article,and Krauthammer’s point:

Do the tally. In return for selling out Poland and the Czech Republic by unilaterally abrogating a missile-defense security arrangement that Russia had demanded be abrogated, we get from Russia . . . what? An oblique hint, of possible support, for unspecified sanctions, grudgingly offered and of dubious authority — and, in any case, leading nowhere because the Chinese have remained resolute against any Security Council sanctions.

Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling and pious concern about Iran’s nuclear program — whereas the real objective is stopping that program. This feel-good posturing is worse than useless, because all the time spent achieving gestures is precious time granted Iran to finish its race to acquire the bomb.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from Sarkozy, who could not conceal his astonishment at Obama’s naivete. On Sept. 24, Obama ostentatiously presided over the Security Council. With 14 heads of state (or government) at the table, with an American president at the chair for the first time ever, with every news camera in the world trained on the meeting, it would garner unprecedented worldwide attention.

Unknown to the world, Obama had in his pocket explosive revelations about an illegal uranium enrichment facility that the Iranians had been hiding near Qom. The French and the British were urging him to use this most dramatic of settings to stun the world with the revelation and to call for immediate action.

Hmmm - WWHD? You know, What Would Hillary Do? Would she reveal this nugget of explosive information? My bet is ABSO-FREAKIN’-LUTELY. How about Obama? What would he do:

Obama refused. Not only did he say nothing about it, but, reports the Wall Street Journal (citing Le Monde), Sarkozy was forced to scrap the Qom section of his speech. Obama held the news until a day later — in Pittsburgh. I’ve got nothing against Pittsburgh (site of the G-20 summit), but a stacked-with-world-leaders Security Council chamber it is not.

Why forgo the opportunity? Because Obama wanted the Security Council meeting to be about his own dream of a nuclear-free world. The president, reports the New York Times citing “White House officials,” did not want to “dilute” his disarmament resolution “by diverting to Iran.”

Diversion? It’s the most serious security issue in the world. A diversion from what? From a worthless U.N. disarmament resolution?

Yes. And from Obama’s star turn as planetary visionary: “The administration told the French,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “that it didn’t want to ’spoil the image of success’ for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N.”

Image? Success? Sarkozy could hardly contain himself. At the council table, with Obama at the chair, he reminded Obama that “we live in a real world, not a virtual world.”

He explained: “President Obama has even said, ‘I dream of a world without [nuclear weapons].’ Yet before our very eyes, two countries are currently doing the exact opposite.”

Sarkozy’s unspoken words? “And yet, sacré bleu, he’s sitting on Qom!”

Uh, yeah. It seems like the perfect setting for exposing this information. Evidently, Sarkozy thought so, too. Others didn’t realize what had just happened:

At the time, we had no idea what Sarkozy was fuming about. Now we do. Although he could hardly have been surprised by Obama’s fecklessness. After all, just a day earlier in addressing the General Assembly, Obama actually said, “No one nation can . . . dominate another nation.” That adolescent mindlessness was followed with the declaration that “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War” in fact “make no sense in an interconnected world.” NATO, our alliances with Japan and South Korea, our umbrella over Taiwan, are senseless? What do our allies think when they hear such nonsense?

Bismarck is said to have said: “There is a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.” Bismarck never saw Obama at the U.N. Sarkozy did. (letters@charleskrauthammer.com)

Mon Dieu! Those are some pretty strong words there. Appropriate, though. Can you imagine if any other president, who had the opportunity to chair this very important committee for the FIRST time, sat on that kind of information? No doubt, it wouldn’t just be the French President who was upset about this. Thankfully, those who are less invested in the “aura” of Obama actually paid attention to this “oversight” on Obama’s part at this critical juncture.

Once again, Obama has demonstrated how woefully prepared he is for the REAL World Stage.

(And C, if you’re reading this far, I hope you appreciate the French phrases!)

Um, I’m not so sure that’s going to be a help. But first, my response to my sister so things stay in context, and to explain why the ire on the writer’s part:

Thanks, but I I am well aware. (My partner) and I pay taxes on my insurance through her company since we cannot be legally married. My insurance amount is treated as a benefit to (my partner), thus taxable income under the federal/state system.

Well, considering Obama claims the Baucus plan is the plan he wants (today - it could be different by tomorrow), it’s not gonna be a whole lot more in savings according to this Washington Post story, “Alarm Bell On Health Reform“:

The Democratic senator from Oregon has been the Energizer Bunny of health reform for the past five years. This week he lobbed a big rhetorical stink bomb. Wyden warned publicly that the package being crafted by the Senate Finance Committee would cost lower-income Americans too much and give many people too little choice of insurance plans.

Under the Finance Committee proposal, individuals would be required to obtain insurance. But to drive down the cost of the package, Montana Democrat Max Baucus’s Gang of Six — a gang that pointedly does not include Wyden — trimmed the size of the subsidies available for those who could not afford insurance on their own. Now, a family earning three times the poverty level — $66,150 for a family of four — would have to pay up to 13 percent of their income for health insurance. And that’s just the premiums — not counting deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket expenses.

“I don’t know very many working-class families who you can look in the eyes and say: ‘Do you have that kind of money in your checking account?’ — because they don’t,” Wyden told me.

Those without coverage would face a fine of as much as $3,800, unless costs exceeded 10 percent of their income, in which case they would be given an “affordability exemption.” In other words, they wouldn’t have insurance, but at least they wouldn’t be penalized for it.

Nobody ever told the folks carrying the public-option signs all over America that 85 percent wouldn’t even get to choose it,” Wyden said. “For hundreds of millions of people, they’re going to have no more leverage after this bill passes than they do today. They work in some company, some person they don’t know in the human resources department decides what’s good for them. Nothing has changed.”

”
Bear in mind, Wyden is actually an ally of Obama’s. Yikes.

I concluded with some questions about how all of this would affect us personally, including getting in a little dig particularly about the Federal taxes which didn’t look like they are going to change anytime soon given Obama’s Justice Department’s characterizing us as pedophiles or “incestuous relatives” in its support of DOMA. Ahem.

The Wall Street Journal had not yet come out with its editorial on the Baucus Plan at that time, “Public Option Lite,” or else, I would have just sent that to her, and highlighted this Obama mailer they thoughtfully provided:

Remember this? Yeah, WHO’S plan is going to levee fines?? Sheesh.

I won’t reprint the whole thing here - it is worth your time to take a look, but here are some of the pertinent paragraphs:

Everyone would be forced to buy these government-approved policies, whether or not they suit their needs or budget. Families would face tax penalties as high as $3,800 a year for not complying, singles $950. As one resident of Massachusetts where Mitt Romney imposed an individual mandate in 2006 put it in a Journal story yesterday, this is like taxing the homeless for not buying a mansion.

The political irony here is rich. If liberal health-care reform is going to make people better off, why does it require “a very harsh, stiff penalty” to make everyone buy it? That’s what Senator Obama called it in his Presidential campaign when he opposed the individual mandate supported by Hillary Clinton. He correctly argued then that many people were uninsured not because they didn’t want coverage but because it was too expensive. The nearby mailer to Ohio primary voters gives the flavor of Mr. Obama’s attacks.

And the Baucus-Obama plan will only make insurance even more expensive. Employers will be required to offer “qualified coverage” to their workers (or pay another “free rider” penalty) and workers will be required to accept it, paying for it in lower wages. The vast majority of households already confront the same tradeoff today, except Congress will now declare that there’s only one right answer.

Hold the phone for just a second here. Yes, Clinton’s plan did call for mandated coverage, but OBAMA was the one who said she was going to have fines, not Clinton, a charge she consistently disputed. And if you want a reminder of the two plans, Clinton’s and Obama’s, here’s a LINK to Paul Krugman’s good article in which he highlights those differences.

Now, back to the Journal’s Editorial:

The subsidies in the Baucus plan go to people without a job-based plan and who earn under three times the federal poverty level, or about $66,000 for a family of four. Yet according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis we’ve seen, the plan isn’t much of an improvement over the current market.

Take a family of four making $42,000 in 2016. While government would subsidize 80% of their premium and pay $1,500 to offset cost-sharing, they’d still pay $6,000 a year or 14.3% of their total income. A family making $54,000 could still pay 18.1% of their income, while an individual earning $26,500 would be on the hook for 15.5%, and one earning $32,400 for 17.3%. So lower-income workers would still be forced to devote huge portions of their salaries to expensive policies that they may not want or be able to afford.

Cough, sputter, what??? We’re going to be spending HOW MUCH? Oh, but wait, there’s more:

Like the House bill, Mr. Baucus uses 10 years of taxes to fund about seven years of spending. Some $215 billion is scrounged up by imposing a 35% excise tax on insurance companies for plans valued at more than $21,000 for families and $8,000 for individuals. This levy would merely be added to the insurers’ “administrative load” and passed down to all consumers in higher prices. Ditto for the $59 billion that Mr. Baucus would raise by taxing the likes of clinical laboratories and drug and device makers.

Mr. Baucus also wants to cut $409 billion from Medicare, according to CBO, though the only money that is certain to see the budget ax is $123 billion from the Medicare Advantage program. Liberal Democrats hate Advantage because it gives 10.2 million seniors private options. The other “savings” come from supposedly automatic cuts that a future Congress is unlikely to ever approve that is, until this entitlement spending swamps the federal budget. Then the government will have no choice but to raise taxes to European welfare-state levels or impose drastic restrictions on patient care. Or, most likely, both.

***

To sum up, the Baucus-Obama plan would increase the cost of insurance and then force people to buy it, requiring subsidies. Those subsidies would be paid for by taxes that make health care and thus insurance even more expensive, requiring even more subsidies and still higher taxes. It’s a recipe to ruin health care and bankrupt the country, and that’s even before liberal Democrats see Mr. Baucus and raise him, and then attempt to ram it all through the Senate. (Emphasis mine.)

Gee, they make this sound so good, where do I sign up?? Ahem. As Bronwyn’s Harbor pointed out in TWO excellent posts this week, there will be incredible costs to all of us that are being masked, or simply unmentioned, by our esteemed elected officials. Looks like the WSJ has had enough of that subterfuge. Let’s hope more sources will expose these plans, too.

I guess I’m getting an idea of just how this might affect us after all…

No need to take my word for it. Watch this short video (from a traffic camera) to get an idea of just how many people were there (and again, thanks to Logistics Monster, who was THERE, for this video link):

The thing that bugged me about the MSM reporting is that they consistently copied each other - oh, no wait - it just LOOKED that way (check out their opening lines in the articles above and you’ll see what I mean). No, it is that they consistently claimed the marchers were all Conservatives. Apparently, this was their way to dismiss the real anger and frustration people have toward this Congress, whose approval rating is LOW, something else these writers could have looked up easily, and this President, whose ratings continue to decline. They just write them off as some right-wing whackos (1.5 million or so of them), and pay no attention to their actual concerns.

And they have plenty of them. You know, concerns like the fact that the US Government now owning 61% of GM (hey, anyone want to buy a Cadillac?); or that the Obama Administration is adding $3 MILLION to the National Debt EVERY MINUTE; or maybe it’s the 32 czars - oops, make that 31 czars (see ya, Van) Obama is appointing left and right; or the Health Care Bill; or I could go on and on and on. These aren’t just Conservative concerns - these are AMERICAN concerns. But they won’t report it that way, because it doesn’t suit the meme they have created. Had they bothered to talk to some more people on the ground, they would have found out they were Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, all coming together to protest the out of control spending of this Congress and this Administration. To put it in perspective, we are $1 TRILLION more in debt since Obama took office. $ONE TRILLION. Once again, that’s not just an issue for Conservatives. That is an issue for ALL Americans.

Here are some photos of signs at the march - they came via Barbara Espinosa who sent them to Pajamas Media at THIS site. You can see more there:

This video from - of all places - MSNBC - is a fairly good synopsis (though they still couldn’t refrain from painting this as a wholly conservative movement - until the very, very end, when the reporter actually spoke the truth). I saw it at Michelle Malkin’s site while looking for an awesome photo I saw last night, which I have not been able to find again. The sign said, “We Are Not Wee Weed Up: We are PISSED!” If I find it, I’ll add it. Here’s the video:

This is but a snapshot of the day. There is so, so much more to the events of the day, the numbers of people, the calls for accountability in our government.

For those people who aren’t upset about the added $Trillion to our deficit, the takeover of GM, the unvetted czars, the $Trillion Health Care Plan, etc., etc., those people who are downplaying the size of this march, who blow it off as just some group of conservatives going off half cocked, my question is, Why the hell are you NOT upset at what our government is doing??? Bill Clinton downsized our government tremendously, Bush increased it, and now Obama is bankrupting it. Why AREN’T they upset??

And I have another number for you: 400. Yes, Saturday marks an inauspicious milestone. 400 is the number of Service Members who have been discharged under DADT during Obama’s Administration. 400 men and women whose lives were changed simply because of whom they love. 400 men and women who were willing to serve their country, to put themselves in harm’s way for us, for the U.S.A, and they have now been fired.

And here’s another number for you: $56,400. That is the average, approximate cost to train a service member for their first duty station by one estimate. $56,400 each for enlisted personnel, not officers, including when they first visit a Recruiter (these are 2006 figures, so it might be more now).

The average cost to train an officer? That number is: 120,772. If that officer happens to be a fighter pilot, you can go ahead and round that number up to: $1,450,000. Remember, these are just averages. The cost to train Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach was $25,000,000. Fehrenbach, a decorated war hero, was fired from the Air Force under DADT.

And one last number for you: 9/11. Many people in this country were moved to do some kind of service to and for their country as a result of the attacks on 9/11, GLBT people included. Obama has been pushing this huge call to Service, including on 9/11/09. Secretary Clinton gave a speech on the Commemoration of the First Annual National Day of Service And Remembrance on 9/11. Presumably, the ability to serve one’s country should be open to ALL of its citizens.

Yet today, that ability is not. As of today, 400 Americans have been told their willingness to serve their country, to put themselves in harm’s way on her behalf, is neither desired nor accepted. 400 Americans have been told that the National Day of Service does not apply to them. 400.

How about those numbers?

Rather, the point of the Editorial has to do with an upcoming Supreme Court decision:

The Supreme Court may be about to radically change politics by striking down the longstanding rule that says corporations cannot spend directly on federal elections. If the floodgates open, money from big business could overwhelm the electoral process, as well as the making of laws on issues like tax policy and bank regulation.

The court, which is scheduled to hear arguments on this issue on Wednesday, is rushing to decide a monumental question at breakneck speed and seems willing to throw established precedents and judicial modesty out the window.

Corporations and unions have been prohibited from spending their money on federal campaigns since 1947, and corporate contributions have been barred since 1907. States have barred corporate expenditures since the late 1800s. These laws are very much needed today. In the 2008 election cycle, Fortune 100 companies alone had combined revenues of $13.1 trillion and profits of $605 billion. That dwarfs the $1.5 billion that Federal Election Commission-registered political parties spent during the same election period, or the $1.2 billion spent by federal political action committees.

Uh, okay. Is it really possible that the Editors are unaware just how much money Obama spent to buy the White House in the last election? Are they unaware that he violated one of his campaign promises to forego Public Financing? Did they even BOTHER to look up just how much money Obama GOT from corporations?? Evidently not. Hence their outrage at this possibility. And it goes on:

The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the limitations on corporate campaign expenditures. In 1990, in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and again in 2003, in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, it made clear that Congress was acting within its authority and that the restrictions are consistent with the First Amendment.

In late June, the court directed the parties to address whether Austin and McConnell should be overruled. It gave the parties in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission a month to write legal briefs on a question of extraordinary complexity and importance, and it scheduled arguments during the court’s vacation.

All of this is disturbing on many levels. Normally, the court tries not to decide cases on constitutional grounds if they can be resolved more simply. Here the court is reaching out to decide a constitutional issue that could change the direction of American democracy.

The Editors are sure right about that - it IS “disturbing on many levels.” I just don’t get why they didn’t get so exercised about this say, oh, two years ago. I guess I’m just nitpicky that way.

And their concern continues:

The court usually shows great respect for its own precedents, a point Chief Justice John Roberts made at his confirmation hearings. Now the court appears ready, without any particular need, to overturn important precedents and decades of federal and state law.

The scheduling is enormously troubling. There is no rush to address the constitutionality of the corporate expenditures limit. But the court is racing to do that in a poorly chosen case with no factual record on the critical question, making careful deliberation impossible.

Most disturbing, though, is the substance of what the court seems poised to do. If corporations are allowed to spend from their own treasuries on elections — rather than through political action committees, which take contributions from company employees — it would usher in an unprecedented age of special-interest politics.

Corporations would have an enormous say in who wins federal elections. They would be able to use this influence to obtain subsidies, stimulus money and tax loopholes and to undo protections for investors, workers and consumers. It would take an extraordinarily brave member of Congress to stand up to agents of big business who then could say, quite credibly, that they would spend whatever it takes in the next election to defeat him or her.

The conservative majority on the court likes to present itself as deferential to the elected branches of government and as minimalists about the role of judges. Chief Justice Roberts promised the Senate that if confirmed he would remember that it’s his “job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.”

If the court races to overturn federal and state laws, and its well-established precedents, to free up corporations to drown elections in money, it will be swinging for the fences. The American public will be the losers.

Well,I don’t know about you, but this seems just a tad disingenuous to me. They are railing NOW about the money corporations can spend? Do you think they gave a crap that Goldman Sachs, yes, I said, GOLDMAN SACHS, gave Obama almost $1 MILLION dollars? How about Time Warner giving him almost $600,000? The list goes on and on, which is what makes the outrage of the Editors ring just a bit hollow to me. How about you?

Naturally, it’s about Secretary Hillary Clinton. For once, there was a GOOD article, calling out some of the sexism with which she has had to deal, while highlighting the incredible work she has been doing on behalf of the State4 Department, and our country. David Rothkopf had this article, “It’s 3:00 a.m. Do you Know Where Hillary Clinton Is?” I admit, when I first saw the title, I thought he was being snarky, and it was going to be yet another hatchet job on this amazing woman, this bright star. Imagine my delight when I read it, and discovered, far from snark, this was a serious article, about a serious role, and a serious person. All I can say is, it’s about damn time:

When it comes to Hillary Rodham Clinton, we’re missing the forest for the pantsuits.

Clinton is not the first celebrity to become the nation’s top diplomat — that honor goes to her most distant predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, who by the time he took office was one of the most famous and gossiped-about men in America — but she may be the biggest. And during her first seven months in office, the former first lady, erstwhile presidential candidate and eternal lightning rod has drawn more attention for her moods, looks, outtakes and (of course) relationship with her husband than for, well, her work revamping the nation’s foreign policy.

Even venerable publications — such as one to which I regularly contribute, Foreign Policy — have woven into their all-Hillary-all-the-time coverage odd discussions of Clinton’s handbag and scarf choices. Daily Beast editor Tina Brown, while depicting herself as a Clinton supporter, has been scathing and small-minded in discussing such things as Clinton’s weight and hair, while her “defense” of Hillary in her essay “Obama’s Other Wife” was as sexist as the title suggests.

Indeed, sexism has followed Clinton from the campaign trail to Foggy Bottom, as seen most recently in the posturing outrage surrounding the exchange in Congo when Clinton reacted with understandable frustration to the now-infamous question regarding her husband’s views. Major media outlets have joined the gossipfest, whether the New York Times, which covered Clinton’s first big policy speech by discussing whether she was in or out with the White House, or The Washington Post, where a couple of reporters mused about whether a brew called Mad Bitch would be the beer of choice for the secretary of state.

May I just pause here to say, THANK YOU for calling these “news” sources out for these sexist depictions/attacks on Clinton. Thank you.

As to the work of Secretary Clinton, the article continues:

Amid all the distractions, what is Clinton actually doing? Only overseeing what may be the most profound changes in U.S. foreign policy in two decades — a transformation that may render the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush mere side notes in a long transition to a meaningful post-Cold War worldview.

The secretary has quietly begun rethinking the very nature of diplomacy and translating that vision into a revitalized State Department, one that approaches U.S. allies and rivals in ways that challenge long-held traditions. And despite the pessimists who invoked the “team of rivals” cliche to predict that President Obama and Clinton would not get along, Hillary has defined a role for herself in the Obamaverse: often bad cop to his good cop, spine stiffener when it comes to tough adversaries and nurturer of new strategies. Recognizing that the 3 a.m. phone calls are going to the White House, she is instead tackling the tough questions that, since the end of the Cold War, have kept America’s leaders awake all night.

In these early days of the new administration, it has been easy to focus on what Clinton has not achieved or on ways in which her power has been supposedly constrained. Indeed, some of her efforts have been frustrated by difficult personnel approvals or disputes with the White House about who should get what jobs. But this is the way of all administrations. More unusual has been the avidity with which the new president has seized the reins of foreign policy — more assertively than either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton before him. Obama’s centrality amplifies the importance of his closest White House staffers, while his penchant for appointing special envoys such as Richard Holbrooke (on Afghanistan and Pakistan) and George Mitchell (on the Middle East) has been interpreted by some as limiting Clinton’s role.

Given the challenges involved, it was perhaps natural that the White House would have a bigger day-to-day hand in some of the nation’s most urgent foreign policy issues. But with Obama, national security adviser Jim Jones, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates absorbed by Iraq, Afghanistan and other inherited problems of the recent past, Clinton’s State Department can take on a bigger role in tackling the problems of the future — in particular, how America will lead the world in the century ahead. This approach is both necessary and canny: It recognizes that U.S. policy must change to fulfill Obama’s vision and that many high-profile issues such as those of the Middle East have often swamped the careers and aspirations of secretaries of state past.

Which nations will be our key partners? What do you do when many vital partners — China, for example, and Russia — are rivals as well? How must America’s alliances change as NATO is stretched to the limit? How do we engage with rogue states and old enemies in ways that do not strengthen them and preserve our prerogative to challenge threats? How do we move beyond the diplomacy of men in striped pants speaking only for governments and embrace potent nonstate players and once-disenfranchised peoples?

In searching for answers, Clinton is leaving behind old doctrines and labels. She outlined her new thinking in a recent speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where she revealed stark differences between the new administration’s worldview and those of its predecessors: The recurring themes include “partnership” and “engagement” and “common interests.” Clearly, Madeleine Albright’s “indispensable nation” has recognized the indispensability of collaborating with others.

Who those “others” are is the area in which change has been greatest and most rapid. “We will put,” Clinton said, “special emphasis on encouraging major and emerging global powers — China, India, Russia and Brazil, as well as Turkey, Indonesia and South Africa — to be full partners in tackling the global agenda.” This is the death knell for the G-8 as the head table of the global community; the administration has an effort underway to determine whether the successor to the G-8 will be the G-20, or perhaps some other grouping. Though the move away from the G-8 began in the waning days of the Bush era, that administration viewed the world through a different lens, a perception that evolved from a traditional great-power view to a pre-Galilean notion that everything revolved around the world’s sole superpower.

Obama and Clinton have both made engaging with emerging powers a priority. Obama visited Russia earlier this year and will host Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his first state dinner in November. Clinton has made trips to China and India, and she would have been with Obama in Russia had she not injured her elbow. Both have visited Africa and the Middle East, reaching out to women and the Islamic world.

To anyone who has been following Clinton throughout her career, the manner in which she has been pursuing her position should come as no surprise. You may recall a book she wrote some time ago, It Takes A Village, in which these kinds of concepts have been discussed. She works in a collegial manner, holding the bigger picture firmly in hand as she goes about her work. It isn’t about her. It is about the world, the country, and the citizens here and abroad. It is about pulling women and children up out of poverty, having people be educated, allowing people to live their lives, and not just fight to survive. That’s her deal, and it has been for a long, long time. And it is that commitment that leads to this:

On many critical agenda items — from a rollback of nuclear weapons to the climate or trade talks — such emerging powers will be essential to achieving U.S. goals. As a result, we’ve seen a new American willingness to play down old differences, whether with Russia on a missile shield or, as Clinton showed on her China trip, with Beijing on human rights.

At the center of Clinton’s brain trust is Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Now head of policy planning at the State Department, Slaughter elaborated on the ideas in Clinton’s speech. “We envision getting not just a new group of states around a table, but also building networks, coalitions and partnerships of states and nonstate actors to tackle specific problems,” she told me.

“To do that,” Slaughter continued, “our diplomats are going to need to have skills that are closer to community organizing than traditional reporting and analysis. New connecting technologies will be vital tools in this kind of diplomacy.”

A new team has been brought in to make these changes real. Clinton recruited Alec Ross, one of the leaders of Obama’s technology policy team, to the seventh floor of the State Department as her senior adviser for innovation. His mission is to harness new information tools to advance U.S. interests — a task made easier as the Internet and mobile networks have played starring roles in recent incidents, from Iran to the Uighur uprising in western China to Moldova. Whether through a telecommunications program in Congo to protect women from violence or text messaging to raise money for Pakistani refugees in the Swat Valley, technology has been deployed to reach new audiences.

Of course, you need more than new ideas to revitalize the State Department; you need resources, too. The secretary has brought in former Bill Clinton-era budget chief Jack Lew to help her claw back money for statecraft that many in Foggy Bottom feel has been sucked off toward the Pentagon. She has also created special positions to back new priorities, such as Melanne Verveer as ambassador at large for women’s issues, Elizabeth Bagley to handle public-private outreach worldwide and Todd Stern as the chief negotiator on climate.

Even just a few months in, it’s clear that these appointments are far from window dressing. Lew, Slaughter and the acting head of the U.S. Agency for International Development are leading an effort to rethink foreign aid with the new Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, an initiative modeled on the Pentagon’s strategic assessments and designed to review State’s priorities. Stern has conducted high-level discussions on climate change around the world, notably with China. Clinton made women’s issues a centerpiece of her recent 11-day trip to Africa, where she stressed that “the social, political and economic marginalization of women across Africa has left a void in this continent that undermines progress and prosperity.”

Unlike other politicians, I don’t think Clinton appoints people to be “window dressing,” but to get the job done. That is further evidenced with the following appointment:

Clinton has also signaled the importance of private-sector experience by naming former Goldman Sachs International vice chairman Robert Hormats, a respected veteran of four administrations, to handle economic issues at the State Department, as well as Judith McHale, former chief executive of Discovery Communications, to run public diplomacy. In the same vein, she has opened up Cuba to American telecommunications companies and reached out to India’s private sector on energy cooperation — showing that this administration will seek to advance national interests by tapping the self-interests of the business community. As with any new administration, there have been inevitable problems. The old campaign teams — Clinton’s and Obama’s — still eye each other warily, but this feeling is gradually fading. And by most accounts, the administration’s national security team has come together successfully, with Clinton developing strong relationships with national security adviser Jones and Defense Secretary Gates. Her policy deputy, Jim Steinberg, has renewed an old collaboration with deputy national security adviser Tom Donilon; the two of them, working with Obama campaign foreign policy advisers Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert, have formed what one State Department seventh-floor dweller called “a powerful quartet at the heart of real interagency policymaking.” Henry Kissinger may have overstated matters when he said this is the best White House-State relationship in recent memory, but it’s not bad, while the State-Pentagon relationship is in its best shape in decades.

Huh. Well, I’ll be. Who could have seen THAT coming? Oh, I know - the 18 million people who voted for her!

But Clinton is not looking back to what was. Rather, she is looking ahead to see how best she can fulfill her work, As such, again, she looks at the big picture, and how best to accomplish what needs doing, including:

At the heart of things, though, is the relationship between Clinton and Obama. For all the administration’s talk of international partnerships, that may be the most critical partnership of all.

So far, according to multiple high-level officials at State and the White House, the two seem aligned in their views. In addition, they are gradually defining complementary roles. Obama has assumed the role of principal spokesperson on foreign policy, as international audiences welcome his new and improved American brand. Clinton thus far has echoed his points but has also delivered tougher ones. Whether on a missile shield against Iran or North Korean saber-rattling, the continued imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma or rape and corruption in Congo, the secretary of state has spoken bluntly on the world stage — even if it triggered snide comments from North Korea.

It is still early, and a president’s foreign policy legacy is often defined less by big principles than by how one reacts to the unexpected, whether missiles in Cuba or terrorism in New York. Promising ideas fail because of limited attention or reluctant bureaucracies, and some rhetoric eventually rings hollow, as the self-congratulatory “smart power” already does to me.

Nevertheless, there is evidence that, seven months into the job, Obama’s unlikely secretary of state is supporting and augmenting his agenda effectively. Not as Obama’s “other wife,” not as Bill Clinton’s wife, not even as a celebrity or as a former presidential candidate — but in a new role of her own making. (drothkopf@carnegieendowment.org

David Rothkopf is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of “Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making” and “Running the World: The Inside Story of the NSC and the Architects of American Power.” He will be online to chat with readers Monday at 11 a.m. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.)

Indeed - she is embracing a “role of her own making.” It is hard not to consider what could have been had she been President instead of Secretary of State. Don’t get me wrong - as I have said a number of times, I am glad that Clinton is in such a crucial role for our country. Clearly, we need her. But the same intelligence; the ability, and vision, to hold the big picture in her grasp while determining the best course to achieve those goals, while finding the people who can affect those goals; the nation-building, yes, the community-building; are all the ingredients necessary for a good presidency. And I am pretty sure that a President Hillary Clinton would not have made any “wee-wee” remarks about the press corp, either. It’s a matter of decorum, the ability to hold things, events, people, in tension. It’s a matter of vision, and the ability to effect change in a real, meaningful way. That’s our Hillary. Thank heavens she is finally starting to get the recognition she so richly deserves.

The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy.

Congratulations, Mr. Rich. With all your education, it has taken you two years longer than most of the people on this site to arrive at this conclusion. Obama is a corporatist. Or, as noted on HillaryIs44, an opportunist. He doesn’t care about the little guy or gal. Further, by his use of signing statements, a disturbing echo of the Bush Administration, he is on the road to becoming a “Unitary Executive.” I wonder if Mr. Rich feels ‘punked’ over that as well.

Let’s take a look at some of Mr. Rich’s observations leading him down disillusionment alley:

… [T]here is real reason for longer-term worry in the form of a persistent, anecdotal drift toward disillusionment among some of the president’s supporters. And not merely those on the left. This concern was perhaps best articulated by an Obama voter, a real estate agent in Virginia, featured on the front page of The Washington Post last week. “Nothing’s changed for the common guy,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been punked.” She cited in particular the billions of dollars in bailouts given to banks that still “act like they’re broke.”

But this mood isn’t just about the banks, Public Enemy No. 1. What the Great Recession has crystallized is a larger syndrome that Obama tapped into during the campaign. It’s the sinking sensation that the American game is rigged — that, as the president typically put it a month after his inauguration, the system is in hock to “the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few” who have “run Washington far too long.” He promised to smite them.

…What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand, from commercial transactions as trivial as the sales of prime concert tickets to cultural forces as pervasive as the news media.

Come on, Mr. Rich, it’s not such a long walk to realize why Wall Street has been protected with endless bailouts. Mr. Obama got more money from Wall St. than any other candidate. Rich must give Obama credit that he is doing some of the “rigging.” Rich still tries to pretend that Obama just can’t fight ‘the man.’ loathe to acknowledge that Obama is ‘the man.’ Certainly, he was elected by ‘the man.’

Where Rich tries halfheartedly to assail Republicans for disruptive town hall meetings, he must admit Democrats have unclean hands as well:

As Democrats have pointed out, the angry hecklers disrupting town-hall meetings convened by members of Congress are not always ordinary citizens engaging in spontaneous grass-roots protests or even G.O.P. operatives, but proxies for corporate lobbyists. (snip)

But the Democratic members of Congress those hecklers assailed can hardly claim the moral high ground. Their ties to health care interests are merely more discreet and insidious. As Congressional Quarterly reported last week, industry groups contributed almost $1.8 million in the first six months of 2009 alone to the 18 House members of both parties supervising health care reform, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer among them.

Then there are the 52 conservative Blue Dog Democrats, who have balked at the public option for health insurance. Their cash intake from insurers and drug companies outpaces their Democratic peers by an average of 25 percent, according to The Post. And let’s not forget the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which has raked in nearly $500,000 from a single doctor-owned hospital in McAllen, Tex. — the very one that Obama has cited as a symbol of runaway medical costs ever since it was profiled in The New Yorker this spring.

Finally, Rich has a hallelujah moment when he points out that (D) or (R) after one’s name means less and less. It’s the character, stupid!

In this maze of powerful moneyed interests, it’s not clear who any American in either party should or could root for. The bipartisan nature of the beast can be encapsulated by the remarkable progress of Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressman. Tauzin was a founding member of the Blue Dog Democrats in 1994. A year later, he bolted to the Republicans. Now he is chief of PhRMA, the biggest pharmaceutical trade group. In the 2008 campaign, Obama ran a television ad pillorying Tauzin for his role in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices. Last week The Los Angeles Times reported — and The New York Times confirmed — that Tauzin, an active player in White House health care negotiations, had secured a behind-closed-doors flip-flop, enlisting the administration to push for continued protection of drug prices. Now we know why the president has ducked his campaign pledge to broadcast such negotiations on C-Span.

The making of legislative sausage is never pretty. The White House has to give to get. But the cynicism being whipped up among voters is justified. Unlike Hillary Clinton, whose chief presidential campaign strategist unapologetically did double duty as a high-powered corporate flack, Obama promised change we could actually believe in.

Rich cannot miss an opportunity to trash Hillary Clinton to the bargain. I was waiting for him to find some inane reason to drag her name into this, even though Obama has proven himself to be in bed with corporate interests ten times over. We’d be lucky to have her as President right now. No matter what, I can assure you he would not feel ‘punked.’

Still, Mr. Rich cannot hide from the truth although he does try to soft pedal it:

[Obama’s] first questionable post-victory step was to assemble an old boys’ club of Robert Rubin protégés and Goldman-Citi alumni as the White House economic team, including a Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who failed in his watchdog role at the New York Fed as Wall Street’s latest bubble first inflated and then burst. The questions about Geithner’s role in adjudicating the subsequent bailouts aren’t going away, and neither is the angry public sense that the fix is still in. We just learned that nine of those bailed-out banks — which in total received $175 billion of taxpayers’ money, but as yet have repaid only $50 billion — are awarding a total of $32.6 billion in bonuses for 2009.

It’s in this context that Obama can’t afford a defeat on health care. A bill will pass in a Democrat-controlled Congress. What matters is what’s in it. The final result will be a CAT scan of those powerful Washington interests he campaigned against, revealing which have been removed from the body politic (or at least reduced) and which continue to metastasize. The Wall Street regulatory reform package Obama pushes through, or doesn’t, may render even more of a verdict on his success in changing the system he sought the White House to reform.

President Obama has shown no signs that he wants corporate control to stop metastasizing. The advisors and moneyed interests with whom he surrounds himself offer ample evidence of that, which even Mr. Rich now admits.

Despite this Administration’s expending significant resources on smoke and mirrors, the realities that Mr. Rich alludes to are getting more and more attention. Change We Can Believe In has now been substituted with The Fix Is In.

Some of us knew that a long time ago.

Well, here is another one: Signing Statements. Yes, the bane of our existence, or at least one of them, during the Bush Years. Yep, apparently, Obama has changed his mind. Just like he did on FISA. DADT. DOMA. And I could go on. So could you, I am sure (and feel free to do so). In this NY Times article, “Obama’s Embrace of a Bush Tactic Riles Congress,” we have yet another example of how much like Bush Obama really is:

President Obama has issued signing statements claiming the authority to bypass dozens of provisions of bills enacted into law since he took office, provoking mounting criticism by lawmakers from both parties.

President George W. Bush, citing expansive theories about his constitutional powers, set off a national debate in 2006 over the propriety of signing statements — instructions to executive officials about how to interpret and put in place new laws — after he used them to assert that he could authorize officials to bypass laws like a torture ban and oversight provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

In the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama called Mr. Bush’s use of signing statements an “abuse,” and said he would issue them with greater restraint. The Obama administration says the signing statements the president has signed so far, challenging portions of five bills, have been based on mainstream interpretations of the Constitution and echo reservations routinely expressed by presidents of both parties.

Still, since taking office, Mr. Obama has relaxed his criteria for what kinds of signing statements are appropriate. And last month several leading Democrats — including Representatives Barney Frank of Massachusetts and David R. Obey of Wisconsin — sent a letter to Mr. Obama complaining about one of his signing statements.

Wow! How shocking that Obama would do this!!!! That is so unlike him! Which, by the upside-down rules that now seem to govern journalism, and well, governance, I mean, “Of course Obama was going to do this!! Did anyone really believe otherwise?” Apparently, some people did:

“During the previous administration, all of us were critical of the president’s assertion that he could pick and choose which aspects of Congressional statutes he was required to enforce,” they wrote. “We were therefore chagrined to see you appear to express a similar attitude.”

They were reacting to a statement Mr. Obama issued after signing a bill that expanded assistance to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank while requiring the administration to pressure the organizations to adopt certain policies. Mr. Obama said he could disregard the negotiation instructions under his power to conduct foreign relations.

The administration protested that it planned to carry out the provisions anyway and that its statement merely expressed a general principle. But Congress was not mollified. On July 9, in a bipartisan rebuke, the House of Representatives voted 429 to 2 to ban officials from using federal money to disobey the restrictions. And in their July 21 letter, Mr. Frank and Mr. Obey — the chairmen of the Financial Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee — asked Mr. Obama to stop issuing such signing statements, warning that Congress might not approve more money for the banking organizations unless he agreed.

Oh, nice. And it gets worse:

In March, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent Mr. Obama a letter criticizing a signing statement that challenged a statute protecting government whistle-blowers who tell lawmakers privileged or “otherwise confidential” information. He accused Mr. Obama of chilling potential whistle-blowers, undermining the intent of Congress in a way that violated his campaign promises. The White House said it intended only to reaffirm similar reservations made by previous presidents. (Emphasis mine)

Yes, I am sure that was Obama’s intent - not to threaten government whistle blowers. No, of COURSE not - who would think such a thing???
That’s not all:

Other laws Mr. Obama has said he need not obey as written include format requirements for budget requests, limits on whom he may appoint to a commission, and a restriction on putting troops under United Nations command.

After Mr. Bush transformed signing statements from an obscure tool into a commonplace term, Mr. Obama’s willingness to use them has disappointed some who had hoped he would roll back the practice, not entrench it.

“We didn’t think it was an appropriate practice when President Bush was doing it, and our policy is such that we don’t think it is an appropriate practice when President Obama is doing it,” said H. Thomas Wells, who just stepped down as president of the American Bar Association.

In 2006, the association called the practice unconstitutional and said presidents should veto legislation if it had flaws, giving Congress a chance to override the pronouncements.

No freakin’ duh. And not for nothing, but OBAMA claimed that it was inappropriate, too, when Bush was doing it. But that was then, this is now.

Naturally, Obama has some folks in his corner:

But other legal experts argued that signing statements were lawful and appropriate because it was impractical to veto important bills over small problems. Among them, Walter Dellinger, who helped develop the legal framework for signing statements as a Clinton administration official, said Mr. Obama was using the mechanism appropriately, and the problem with Mr. Bush’s statements was that he cited dubious legal theories.

“The fact that a previous or subsequent president might refuse to comply with laws that are valid is not a reason for this president to decline to assert his authority with regard to laws that are invalid,” Mr. Dellinger said.

Mr. Dellinger signed a 2006 essay defending signing statements with other former Clinton officials, including David Barron and Martin Lederman, who now run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. They work with White House lawyers Daniel Meltzer and Trevor Morrison, along with Office of Management and Budget officials, to produce Mr. Obama’s statements.

Since the 19th century, presidents have occasionally signed bills while calling a provision unconstitutional. But the practice was rare until President Ronald Reagan. He and his successors, including Bill Clinton, began issuing signing statements much more frequently and challenging far more provisions.

The practice peaked under Mr. Bush, who challenged nearly 1,200 provisions of bills over eight years — about twice the number challenged by all previous presidents combined, according to data compiled by Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio professor.

Remember when Obama invoked the name of Ronald Reagan as a pivotal president, singing his praises? Well, that told SOME of us something Not enough of us were paying attention, though. Anyway, thus far, here are the numbers:

Mr. Obama has attached signing statements to 5 of the 42 bills he has signed, focusing on 19 specific provisions. He also challenged, without listing them, “numerous provisions” in a budget bill requiring officials to obtain permission from a Congressional committee before spending money. It contained dozens of such requirements.

In the presidential campaign, the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, promised never to issue a signing statement. By contrast, Mr. Obama said it was a legitimate way “to protect a president’s constitutional prerogatives” when used with greater restraint than Mr. Bush.

“Restraint,” Mr. Obama and his campaign said then, included not issuing “signing statements that undermine the legislative intent” or “nullify or undermine Congressional instructions as enacted into law.”

But in March, when he issued a presidential memorandum on signing statements, Mr. Obama defined restraint as citing only “interpretations of the Constitution that are well founded,” a subtle shift that provides greater leeway.

Still, unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama has not mentioned the Unitary Executive Theory, an expansive view of executive power that conflicts with Supreme Court precedent. His only invocation of his commander-in-chief authority was limited, taking aim at a requirement that he get permission from a military subordinate before taking an action.

“He has not pushed the envelope as far as the Bush administration in making the kind of claims that Bush made,” said Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University professor who studies signing statements. “But he is still using it in ways that were controversial before George W. Bush came to office.”

Yet. He has not mentioned the “Unitary Executive Theory” YET. Does anyone honestly think he won’t at some point? That’s what I thought.

This is what else I think: Obama = Bush = Obushma. Really, they should have seen it coming. He gave out some not-so-subtle hints, all along the way, which they chose to ignore. At our peril, of course - because we are the ones who will ultimately bear the brunt of it all. Again.

Holy moley. Teresa Heinz Kerry is a BIG contributor of a foundation whose director secretly paid off the funds embezzled by one of ACORN’s founders?? Hmmmm. I have to say, I think Glenn is right - they have some ’splaining to do.

But did you notice what other organization was listed beside that one office building of ACORN’s? That’s right - the SEIU, the very union that just held CA hostage with the help of their puppet, Obama. Yes, they were the ones who went complaining to Obama that The Governator was going to trim back some of their wages in an effort to keep CA from going belly-up. In return, Obama threated the Governator with cutting off any more Federal funds to CA if he continued to mess with Obama’s posse. Oh, the plot just continues to thicken, doesn’t it?

For an excellent recap of just how closely Obama is linked with ACORN, I recommend this article by SusanUnPC at No Quarter, “A Damning Expose of Obama, ACORN, and the New York Times.”

But don’t forget Barney Frank. No doubt, the reason the intrepid reporter was trying to get Frank to comment on investigating ACORN was Frank’s attempts to funnel BILLIONS - that’s not a typo - BILLIONS of your tax-paying dollars to ACORN. Uh, yeah.

In the words of Sir Walter Scott, “Oh, what a twisted web we weave when first we practice to deceive…” And there is sure a lot of deception going on when it comes to Obama, ACORN, SEIU, Frank, and the list goes on…Some change, huh?

…It isn’t so much that Dick and Rummy are back. It’s that they never left.

They had no intention of turning America’s national security over to the Boy Wonder. The two best infighters in Washington history weren’t yielding turf to a bunch of peach-fuzz pinkos who side with terrorists.

Let W. work out at the S.M.U. gym in Dallas, waiting for history to redeem him; Dick and Rummy are leaning forward into history, as they always do. Cheney is tawny with TV makeup; there’s no point taking it off. The gigs are nonstop, and he has a big Obama-bashing speech Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute.

…“That was funny when you were on Fox and Neil Cavuto called you Obama’s ‘ball and Cheney,’ ” Rummy grins, taking a gulp of his brunello.

“The punks thought they could roll over us,” Vice mutters. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

… “I can’t believe how easy it was to bring Obama into line,” Rummy says, gnawing on Gorgonzola. “We wouldn’t have needed waterboarding if everybody cracked like a peanut. It was even easier than getting the bit into Junior’s mouth. Way simpler than if we’d had to contend with McCain. In the end, the right guy won.”

…“You’re running national security now and everyone knows it,” Rummy says. “You got Obama to do an about-face on the torture photos. He’s using our old line about how it would endanger the troops. He’s keeping our military tribunals. His Justice Department invoked our state secrets privilege to try to get that lawsuit on torture and rendition dismissed. He’s trying to stop any sort of truth commission, thank goodness. He’s got his own surge going in Afghanistan. He’s withdrawing from Iraq more slowly. He’s extended our secret incursions over the Afghan border into Pakistan.”

“Transparency bites,” [Cheney] snarls.

…”Well,” Dick says. “He’s got to keep Gitmo open. It’s rich that his own party won’t give him the money to close it. The NIMBY factor works every time — no terrorists in my backyard. He’s got to stop this pansy diplomacy with Muslim nations. He’s got to let Bibi take out those Iranian centrifuges. He’s got to stop his Kodak moments and Commie book club with Hugo Chávez. He’s got to release those C.I.A. memos proving that we were right to rip up the Constitution. And, of course, he’s got to pardon Scooter.”

“Can we get him to do all that, Dick?”

Dick twinkles. “Yes, we can.”

But here’s my point, Maureen. While you’re making a funny about Obama looking like GWB’s third term, which most everybody here predicted he would, do you really think Cheney would be able to do this to Hillary Clinton or John McCain if either of them were occupying the Oval Office right now? Are you intimating that our current President doesn’t have enough of a spine? What’s wrong, Maureen, are you running out of people to snark so now you have to take on “Obambi”?

MoDo, still happy you backed the “Boy Wonder,” as you call him, with such a vengeance?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Okay. I’ll stop beating around the bush. This article was written by Nicholas Kristof, Is Rape Serious?. Now, one would think the immediate answer to that is a resounding, “YES!” One would be wrong:

When a woman reports a rape, her body is a crime scene. She is typically asked to undress over a large sheet of white paper to collect hairs or fibers, and then her body is examined with an ultraviolet light, photographed and thoroughly swabbed for the rapist’s DNA.

It’s a grueling and invasive process that can last four to six hours and produces a “rape kit” — which, it turns out, often sits around for months or years, unopened and untested (emphasis mine).

See what I mean? I cannot begin to tell you the number of close friends who have been raped or sexually assaulted. As someone who worked with a Rape Crisis agency, I cannot begin to tell you how FUCKING HARD it is for women to admit, acknowledge, accept, that they have been raped, and to try and do something about it. They FORCE themselves to go to the hospital, and subject themselves to the additional invasion in an effort to catch the assailant. And the damn things aren’t even PROCESSED??? Apparently not, more often than you would think:

Stunningly often, the rape kit isn’t tested at all because it’s not deemed a priority. If it is tested, this happens at such a lackadaisical pace that it may be a year or more before there are results (if expedited, results are technically possible in a week).

So while we have breakthrough DNA technologies to find culprits and exculpate innocent suspects, we aren’t using them properly — and those who work in this field believe the reason is an underlying doubt about the seriousness of some rape cases. In short, this isn’t justice; it’s indifference.

Well, that is certainly putting it mildly. “Indifference”? “INDIFFERENCE”??? No, that is blatant misogyny and sexism right there, not something as innocuous as “indifference.” This is a DECISION made by the people in those agencies who apparently don’t give a DAMN about women, and about the assault of women, not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically. Kristof makes my point:

Solomon Moore, a colleague of mine at The Times, last year wrote about a 43-year-old legal secretary who was raped repeatedly in her home in Los Angeles as her son slept in another room. The attacker forced the woman to clean herself in an attempt to destroy the evidence.

Tim Marcia, the detective on the case, thought this meant that the perpetrator was a habitual offender who would strike again. Mr. Marcia rushed the rape kit to the crime lab but was told to expect a delay of more than one year.

So Mr. Marcia personally drove the kit 350 miles to deliver it to the state lab in Sacramento. Even there, the backlog resulted in a four-month delay — but then it produced a “cold hit,” a match in a database of the DNA of previous offenders.

Yet in the months while the rape kit sat on a shelf, the suspect had allegedly struck twice more. Police said he broke into the homes of a pregnant woman and a 17-year-old girl, sexually assaulting each of them.

And everyone of those - oh - I can barely even come up with names bad enough for them - who did NOTHING with that rape kit are culpable for those women, no, that woman and that GIRL, being sexually assaulted. Their decision to not even bother to process that kit directly led to the perpetrator being able to attack again. Clearly, these particular people are not the only ones, as Kristof noted. But, WHY?

“The criminal justice system is still ill equipped to deal with rape and not that good at moving rape cases forward,” notes Sarah Tofte, who just wrote a devastating report for Human Rights Watch about the rape-kit backlog. The report found that in Los Angeles County, there were at last count 12,669 rape kits sitting in police storage facilities. More than 450 of these kits had sat around for more than 10 years, and in many cases, the statute of limitations had expired.

TEN YEARS??????? Some of these rape kits are sitting around longer than TEN YEARS???

There are no good national figures, and one measure of the indifference is that no one even bothers to count the number of rape kits sitting around untested.

Why don’t police departments treat rape kits with urgency? One reason is probably expense — each kit can cost up to $1,500 to test — but there also seems to be a broad distaste for rape cases as murky, ambiguous and difficult to prosecute, particularly when they involve (as they often do) alcohol or acquaintance rape.

Oh, yes - it is the expense of it all. Apparently, it is no problem to use DNA testing, or other forensic science to catch criminals, but to catch a woman’s rapist? Yeah, that $1,500 is just WAY too expensive. Maybe it’s because they just don’t think too much of what the victims’ say:

“They talk about the victims’ credibility in a way that they don’t talk about the credibility of victims of other crimes,” Ms. Tofte said.

Charlie Beck, a deputy police chief of Los Angeles, said that there was no excuse for the failure to test rape kits, but he noted that integrating a new technology into police work is complex and involves a learning curve. Since Human Rights Watch began its investigation, he said, the department had resolved to test rape kits routinely — and as a result, cold hits have doubled.

New technology?? What in the hell is Beck TALKING about, “new technology”?? If rape test kits have languished for more than ten years, how freakin’ new can this technology BE??

Moreover, if the results of these rape kits have actually DOUBLED the number of cold hits, it is CRIMINAL to NOT process them ASAP. The police departments are aiding and abetting these rapists because of whatever bullshit reason they want to offer up in their “defense.” There IS no defense for this. None. They are treating women’s lives as if they were dirt, plain and simple. If these were crimes of property, or murder (and many women would equate rape to murder), they’d be all over them, utilizing all kinds of resources. But, hey - it’s just women, right? So, what’s the hurry? And heaven knows, we can’t possibly use any of our budget to find their assailants, who are, you know, men. **Insert any cuss word you feel appropriate at this time. **

Well, at least there is SOME good news:

While the backlog and desultory handling of rape kits are nationwide problems, there is one shining exception: New York City has made a concerted effort over the last decade to test every kit that comes in. The result has been at least 2,000 cold hits in rape cases, and the arrest rate for reported cases of rape in New York City rose from 40 percent to 70 percent, according to Human Rights Watch.

Good for New York City! Now, if we can only get the REST of the country onboard with this concept (and it is not a difficult one - you get a rape kit, you send it in for testing, the results come back, and, voila! Ammunition to catch the rapist!)

Kristof continues:

Some Americans used to argue that it was impossible to rape an unwilling woman. Few people say that today, or say publicly that a woman “asked for it” if she wore a short skirt. But the refusal to test rape kits seems a throwback to the same antediluvian skepticism about rape as a traumatic crime.

“If you’ve got stacks of physical evidence of a crime, and you’re not doing everything you can with the evidence, then you must be making a decision that this isn’t a very serious crime,” notes Polly Poskin, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

It’s what we might expect in Afghanistan, not in the United States.

But it is precisely what is OCCURRING in the United States. I reckon, after this past election season, I really should not be too surprised by this complete and utter disregard for women, and what affects us at our deepest core. Not when we have “news” people like David Shuster calling Chelsea Clinton a whore, and her mother, a US Senator, a pimp. Keith Olbermann has made himself a laughing stock over his insane rants against Hillary Clinton. Oh, screw it - there is not enough time in the day to denote every single instance of sexism/misogyny in the past election. You can watch this for some reminders, if you wish:

That is but the tip of the iceberg of some of the blatant hostility toward women (Clinton in particular) we saw this past election year. What is evident is the pervasiveness of this disregard for women and the issues that affect us. So, yes, we are apparently more like Afghanistan, a country that recently passed a law giving husband the RIGHT to have sex at least once a week, i.e., RAPE his wife (along with child brides AND restricting a woman’s right to leave the HOME*), than we would ever admit. Apparently, we just aren’t as honest about our hatred and dismissal of women as they are. Make no mistake, that is exactly what this is. Hatred of women, and a callous disregard for our bodies, our lives.

Now you can see why I was dragging my feet. What this says about our country, about the very people who have sworn to protect us, is disturbing on so many levels it makes me want to throw up. I suspected that the treatment of Clinton (and Palin, for that matter) was just the tip of the iceberg, but I would GLADLY have been proven wrong. Gladly. But this, not even bothering to process rape kits for years is something I didn’t see coming. The lack of action speaks volumes, and what it says is horrifying…

* The photo in this article shows women in burkas. While I was in Egypt, I saw a number of women in burkas. Our guide, a young woman, said that Egypt is fairly progressive when it comes to women, and that the ones we saw were from other countries, like Saudi Arabia. And, she added, some Egyptian women wear them as a fashion statement. A FASHION statement. If you have never seen a woman up close and personal in a burka, I can tell you, it is startling. I can barely put it into words, but what it does is render her a non-entity. ALL you can see are her eyes, and even then, many burkas have a line of cloth that runs down in-between the eyes, covering as much of the woman up as possible. Honestly, it was shocking. That a woman would CHOOSE to wear something like that as “fashion” boggles my mind.

Without even commenting as to any possible First Amendment breach by virtue of news organizations being beholden to a government for the ability to keep its doors open, my concern is this…Many of us stopped purchasing various newspapers and news magazines in order to punish those organizations for biased reporting and a lack of journalistic ethics. I am exercising the power of the purse – and my decision is not arbitrary, nor is it negotiable.

How I spend my consumer dollars is up to me. Not the government. They do not get to tell me when it is time to buy a new dining table or a sofa. They do not get to tell me when it is time to go to the movies. Nor should they get to tell me when to buy a newspaper. If I decide that the New York Times is no longer the paper of record, but rather a biased rag that was cheerleading and running interference for one candidate while actively working to bury another, then I am entitled to the decision not to support that newspaper with my hard earned dollars.

If Congress makes a decision to bail out this organization with my taxpayer dollars, then they are, in essence, not only telling me how to spend my money, they are spending it for me, against my will.

And where is the accountability? If these media organizations cannot be counted on now to be honest watchdogs, digging for the truth and presenting it fairly, what do you think will happen when they are beholden to a government bailout to keep their doors open?

American Girl in Italy’s excellent article, newspapers are dying because journalism is a joke, agreed with Dan Gainor’s testimony before a Congressional subcommittee that while technology is one reason print media is faltering, the bigger reason is that true journalism is a dying art. Likewise, newspapers are not the only medium to suffer. MSNBC and CNN’s ratings are tanking as well. Why? Because many disgusted consumers have stopped watching certain news programs altogether. If they wanted to watch cheerleaders rather than journalists, they could turn on a football game.

Some concerned citizens have actually gone so far as to contact their cable companies and block these stations from view altogether; deservedly so. We don’t need infotainment and baseless opinion 24/7. We need the whole truth – no matter where it leads.

We need the facts, not propaganda, press releases or Pravda.

I am not getting good value for my dollar with media outlets such as Time or Newsweek, therefore, I no longer choose to give them my hard earned money.

There is a reason why certain businesses die. Pardon this seeming unrelated example, but as something of a frozen yoghurt freak, I decided to check out both the new yoghurt joints that recently opened in my neighborhood. One looks pretty festive from the outside, but when you walk in, the interior is dank, not particularly clean, and the employees’ attitude is don’t bug me, get your stuff and get out. And while I tried to enjoy my cup of grasshopper non-fat, I was treated to smell and taste the cigarette smoke of said employee while he was on a break at the table next to me. As to the other shop – it’s all lit up like a Christmas tree – and the employees have an attitude to match! That place is a gold mine with non stop business day and night. Why? Good value for the dollar and the consumer is treated with respect. Gee. I wonder why that business is doing well.

The news media is not treating the consumer with respect. They are acting like we are a bunch of mindless sheep that can be led around by the nose and distracted by meaningless celebrity pabulum and White House puppy searches.

By the way, how is this Administration’s decision to bail out GM any different? Perhaps the company faltered because it does not make a good product. Perhaps it faltered because it does not have a good business model and is not well run. If something fails, perhaps it is because a message is being sent by consumers – no good value for the dollar. Yet we are being forced to use our hard earned money to support what we obviously do not consider to be a worthwhile or competitive product.

Objecting to this reckless bailout behavior is not a partisan concern, no matter how the folks over at MSNBC et al would like to paint it as such. This is a practical concern. In a recent interview with Fareed Zakaria, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill pointed to the folly of the government pretending it is a magic entity that can get away doing what no smart investor would do: namely, throwing good money after bad.

If our government is able to arbitrarily take our taxpayer dollars and say yes to an organization we say no to, they are taking away our power of the purse. Boycotts have no meaning. Free will is over.

Let news organizations rediscover journalistic ethics. The evolution of technology may dictate we move forward and get our news in a different manner. If that is the case, all the bailouts in the world won’t force people to go out and buy a newspaper. Regardless of the medium, those who are honest enough to offer a good value for the dollar will find a way to stay in business.

Congress should not take our money to bail out whomever they please for reasons of their own.

The Slow Motion Farce of the Newspapers.  

The thrilling headline in the WSJ.com is that the NYT is threatening to disappear its step child the Boston Globe.   The issue is union give-backs, but that is just the start of the argument.  Newspapers no longer make sense.  Newspapers are especially aimless here in the deeply wired and Iphoned up Northeast.   The NYT geniuses paid $1.1 billion for the Globe in ‘93 and have watched the money burn ever since, so that what remains may be worth $12 million.  Meanwhile the NYT is playing a version of the Chekhov story about a man in a troika running from wolves who feeds the pack everything until he is what’s left to feed them.

Why do newspapers resist doom?  Embrace it.  The notion of opening and reading my NYT, WSJ and FT in the morning is silly.   I will make them go away before they go away.  Online is the world.  There is no meaning to printed paper.  The New York Times and the Boston Globe are dead trees walking.  Did you notice that POTUS didn’t call on you at the last White House presser?   POTUS doesn’t read your greasy paper version.  Show up as videographers who blog, waving a Mino Flip and a wi-fi Macbook, and you will get attention.  We are supposed to wait until tomorrow morning to learn what you just heard me say?

:::::::::::::::::::

From my blog and show site, “The John Batchelor Show.”

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”

Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the committee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a “confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom.”

Ms. Moncrief had been providing Ms. Strom with information about ACORN’s election activities. Ms. Strom had written several stories based on information Ms. Moncrief had given her.

During her testimony, Ms. Heidelbaugh said Ms. Moncrief had told her The New York Times articles stopped when she revealed that the Obama presidential campaign had sent its maxed-out donor list to ACORN’s Washington, D.C. office.

Ms. Moncrief told Ms. Heidelbaugh the campaign had asked her and her boss to “reach out to the maxed-out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN.”

Ms. Heidelbaugh then told the congressional panel:

“Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at The New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, “it was a game changer.”’

“IT WAS A GAME CHANGER.” Emphasis mine, obviously. The NY Times withheld a critical story regarding Barack Obama because it would impact the election. How can that be viewed as anything less than unethical,immoral, and as a complete and utter failure to do the work the Fourth Estate has been entrusted to do?

There is more:

Ms. Moncrief made her first overture to Ms. Heidelbaugh after The New York Times allegedly spiked the story — on Oct. 21, 2008. Last fall, she testified under oath about what she had learned about ACORN from her years in its Washington, D.C. office. Although she was present at the congressional hearing, she did not testify.

U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., the ranking Republican on the committee, said the interactions between the Obama campaign and ACORN, as described by Ms. Moncrief, and attested to before the committee by Ms. Heidelbaugh, could possibly violate federal election law, and “ACORN has a pattern of getting in trouble for violating federal election laws.”

He also voiced criticism of The New York Times.

“If true, The New York Times is showing once again that it is a not an impartial observer of the political scene,” he said. “If they want to be a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, they should put Barack Obama approves of this in their newspaper.”

Academicians and journalism experts expressed similar criticism of the Times.

“The New York Times keeps going over the line in every single campaign and last year was the worst, easily,” said Mal Kline of the American Journalism Center. “They would ignore real questions worth examining about Obama, the questions about Bill Ayers or about how he got his house. Then on the other side they would try to manufacture scandals.”

Mr. Kline mentioned Gov. Sarah Palin was cleared by investigators of improperly firing an Alaska State Trooper, but went unnoticed by The Times.

“How many stories about this were in The New York Times,” he asked.

“If this is true, it would not surprise me at all. The New York Times is a liberal newspaper. It is dedicated to furthering the Democratic Party,” said Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of Political Science at Grove City College. “People think The New York Times is an objective news source and it is not. It would not surprise me that if they had a news story that would have swayed the election into McCain’s favor they would not have used it.”

Liberal or not, the issue is their integrity as a reputable news organization. That lack of integrity is most troubling.

Naturally, the ACORN people had something to say about all of this:

ACORN has issued statements claiming that Ms. Moncrief is merely a disgruntled former worker.

“None of this wild and varied list of charges has any credibility and we’re not going to spend our time on it,” said Kevin Whelan, ACORN deputy political director in a statement issued last week.

Yeah, okay. Just like ACORN is a NON-PARTISAN organization, too, right, Kevin? That was completely unbiased int his past election? Like this?

Ahem. Just save it already. We’re not buying what you’re selling.

And finally, here is the response from the NY Times:

Stephanie Strom was contacted for a comment, and The New York Times’ Senior Vice President for Corporate Communications Catherine Mathis replied with an e-mail in her place.

Ms. Mathis wrote, “In response to your questions to our reporter, Stephanie Strom, we do not discuss our newsgathering and won’t comment except to say that political considerations played no role in our decisions about how to cover this story or any other story about President Obama.” (Michael P. Tremoglie can be reached at mtremoglie@thebulletin.us)

Yeah, I bet you don’t discuss your “newsgathering” because then you would have to discuss your “newsDUMPING,” Ms. Mathis!

Between the LA Times and the NY Times, with a whole bunch of “news sources” in between, our media has made it blatantly obvious that reporting critical stories that might actually reveal important, RELEVANT information to the people, is squashed. Our Fourth Estate is no more. It is now a part of the Executive Branch.

Lou Dobbs is right: this is “obscene and outrageous.” And an affront to our democracy, such as it is since the “game changer” information was suppressed. The NY Times needs to change its saying from “All the news that’s fit to print” to “all the news we deem fit to print that best protects our chosen candidate(s).” And that makes them a propaganda rag, nothing more.

Here is how the AAPOR defines the Bradley effect on page 53 of the report:

the tendency for respondents to report a preference for a black candidate (Obama) but vote instead for a white opponent.

And here is what their extensive and rigorous report found (pages 53-54):

Several compelling pieces of evidence suggest that the New Hampshire estimation errors were probably not caused by the “Bradley effect” – or the tendency for respondents to report a preference for a black candidate (Obama) but vote instead for a white opponent. A meta-analysis by Hopkins (2008) indicates that while the Bradley effect did undermine some state-level polls in previous decades, there is no evidence for such an effect in recent years. In the 2008 general election, the very accurate final poll estimates of Barack Obama’s fairly decisive victory over John McCain dispelled suspicion that the Bradley effect was at play during the final weeks of the fall contest. There is also a conspicuous lack of evidence for a Bradley effect in the primary contests outside of New Hampshire. Of the 81 polls conducted during the final 30 days of the Iowa, South Carolina, California, and Wisconsin contests, the vast majority (86%) over-estimated Clinton’s relative vote share, while just 14% over-estimated Obama’s relative vote share. This finding is based on the signed direction of A for each survey.26 Furthermore, as reported in Table 3, poll estimates of Obama’s vote share in New Hampshire were quite accurate – it was only Clinton’s share that was consistently underestimated.

Here is Table 3 (page 14):

In poll after poll Hillary Cinton’s support was undersampled while Obama’s support was correctly sampled. It was not that her supporters lied to pollsters; they were simply not contacted.

Pollster.com offers this summary of the report:

• Given the compressed caucus and primary calendar, polls conducted before the New Hampshire primary may have ended too early to capture late shifts in the electorate’s preferences there.
• Most commercial polling firms conducted interviews on the first or second call, but respondents who required more effort to contact were more likely to support Senator Clinton. Instead of continuing to call their initial samples to reach these hard‐to‐contact people, pollsters typically added new households to the sample, skewing the results toward the opinions of those who were easy to reach on the phone, and who more typically supported Senator Obama.
• Non‐response patterns, identified by comparing characteristics of the pre‐election samples with the exit poll samples, suggest that some groups who supported Senator Clinton–such as union members and those with less education–were under‐ represented in pre‐election polls, possibly because they were more difficult to reach.
• Variations in likely voter models could explain some of the estimation problems in individual polls. Application of the Gallup likely larger error than was present in the unadjusted data. The influx of first-time voters may have had adverse effects on likely voter models.

Hillary’s base of women, blue collar workers, union members, single mothers and the elderly were simply too difficult to contact, while young Obama supporters were always available by telephone. It was not racism or the Bradley Effect that enabled Hillary to win New Hampshire; it was that the pollsters never spoke to her base.

But the media and the Obama campaign had to accuse New Hampshire Democratic Primary voters of racism in order to minimize Hillary’s victory and racialize the race before the South Carolina primary, where the majority of Democratic voters are African-American.

Here is Mickey Kaus of Slate on January 9, 2008:

1. Bradley Effect: It seemed like a nice wonky little point when Polipundit speculated on the Reverse Bradley Effect–the idea that Iowa’s public caucuses led Dem voters to demonstrate their lack of prejudice by caucusing for Obama. Now this is the CW of the hour. Polipundit wrote:

I suspect that Obama may have scored better than he would have in a secret-ballot election, and benefited from a Reverse Bradley Effect.

New Hampshire, of course, is a secret ballot election. Voters might have told pollsters one thing but done another in private.** New Hampshirites I ran into Tuesday night mentioned that the state was very late ratifying the MLK Holiday.

Here is Andrew Kohut in the New York Times on January 10, 2008:

To my mind all these factors deserve further study. But another possible explanation cannot be ignored — the longstanding pattern of pre-election polls overstating support for black candidates among white voters, particularly white voters who are poor.…

Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here’s the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews….

In New Hampshire, the ballots are still warm, so it’s hard to pinpoint the exact cause for the primary poll flop. But given the dearth of obvious explanations, serious consideration has to be given to the difficulties that race and class present to survey methodology.

Here is David Kuo of the Huffington Post as votes were counted during the New Hampshire Primary:

Tonight, despite all the talk of how little race matters in this campaign, it is clear that race is still a big deal in bi-racial campaigns. And it has showed up for the first time, in a measurable way, in the 2008 presidential race.

It means that every poll — from exit polls to tracking polls — are absolutely suspect from here on out.

Here are excerpts from MSNBC on the night of the New Hampshire Primary:

ROBINSON: Well, I‘ll tell you what some people will suspect. Here you have polls, you know, the day before the primary showing Obama way ahead. And he finishes, you know, 15 points lower than that. A lot of people will suspect a “Bradley effect.”

You know, Tom Bradley…

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, Tom Bradley. You‘re…

(CROSSTALK)

ROBINSON: Not the Bill Bradley effect. We were talking about Bill Bradley‘s endorsement being, you know, not necessarily the greatest thing. I‘m talking about Tom Bradley, the mayor—African-American mayor of Los Angeles years ago, ran for governor of California. Polls showed him on election eve that he was going to cruise to victory and he lost. And Doug Wilder of—the first…

SCARBOROUGH: Wait, wait, wait, but are you really saying right now that the people of New Hampshire may have—I won‘t say, be racist, but are you saying that they did not want to go in that booth and vote for a black man? …

BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC ANCHOR: I was just going to say, I‘ve been listening to the panel. Number one, the “Bradley effect,” whether people are going to decide it was in effect in this case is very real and talked about among people in the political business. Let‘s not forget the Gantt race in North Carolina few years ago.…

CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, look, you can only go back—you know, and I go back in recent history and you try to find races where you had these gigantic poll shifts, where the final pre-election polls differed so dramatically from the actual result.

And the one thing they all have in common is something that Eugene Robinson brought up earlier, and that is race.

It was Tom Bradley in California governor‘s race in 1982. The polls had him ahead—ahead by a fairly healthy margin over George Deukmejian. He ended up losing.

And Virginia governor, 1989, Doug Wilder had a double digit lead going into the final—in the final weekend. He won by a very narrow 1 point margin.

Harvey Gant, the 1990 Senate race with Jesse Helms—one of the most divisive races, frankly, that this country had on race. That was, again, pre-election polls had Gant ahead, Helms wins.

So you can‘t help but look at that—and particularly you‘ve got to wonder what this sends—the message that this could send to African-American Democrats, who may look at this and say, well, of course, that‘s what happened. You know, a lot of times when I‘ve noticed this and when you talk to African-American Democrats, they sat here and they‘ll see this race stuff a lot quicker than us in white America. And I think that this is—it‘s at least, you‘ve got to explore it. You‘ve got to look at it. History has taught us this—recent history—when it‘s come to dealing with African-American candidates.

Here is Carol Costello, Andrew Kohut and Professor Charles Ogletree on CNN’s Situation Room on January 11, 2008:

I’m Wolf Blitzer.

You’re in THE SITUATION ROOM.

Is the U.S. ready for an African-American president?

Senator Barack Obama’s strong showing so far in this campaign has many saying absolutely, yes. Others, though, say it’s too soon to tell.

Carol Costello has been looking into this story for us — you’ve been talking to a lot of people supposedly knowledgeable on this very sensitive subject.

What are they telling you?

COSTELLO: Well, it is a sensitive subject, isn’t it?

You know, most I talked with today say it is too soon to tell.

Obama seems to have transcended race, but can he in the long run?

Already, critics say Obama’s opponents are trying to create this subtle narrative of racial division. They deny it, but it illustrates how hard it is in this country to take race out of the equation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO (voice-over): The Iowa caucus created all kinds of excitement surrounding Barack Obama. His win in a predominantly white state and a strong showing in another seemingly proves it — Obama can transcend race. It’s something Obama has always believed could happen.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If I have your support, if I have your energy and involvement and commitment and ideas, then I am here to tell you yes, we can in ‘08.

COSTELLO: Maybe. But there are those who feel while Iowa and New Hampshire prove Obama can certainly get white votes, it doesn’t mean he can continue the trend — that Obama’s second place finish in New Hampshire, despite polls that had him coming in first, illustrates the undercurrent about race that exists in this country.

Andrew Kohut, in charge of Pew Research, has a theory. He says many of those inclined to vote for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire were poor, uneducated whites who don’t participate in polls and who often don’t vote for blacks.

ANDREW KOHUT, PRES., PEW RESEARCH CTR.: At least race should be considered because we know that the kinds of people drawn to Mrs. Clinton are always the kinds of people who turn down surveys at pretty high rates. We don’t know much about whether the people who we don’t get are like the people that we do get.

COSTELLO: Polls about race are notoriously difficult to analyze. Take this ABC/Washington Post poll conducted before the Iowa caucus. A whopping 88 percent of Americans said race would not matter in choosing a president. But pollsters say you have to take this result with a grain of salt. Few people are willing to tell a pollster they’re racist. It reflects the Bradley effect, after Tom Bradley, a black man who ran for governor in California in 1982. Most polls showed him leading but he lost to a white male candidate.

PROF. CHARLES OGLETREE, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: Ask Tom Bradley when he ran for governor in California. Black man, thought he could win, he didn’t. Ask Harvey Gant in North Carolina. Ask Harold Ford, Jr.

COSTELLO: Look at the stats. There is one black governor in the United States. They are nine women governors. They are 16 senators who are women. And one black man, Barack Obama.

Still, Barack Obama got plenty of votes in New Hampshire and in Iowa, which are both 95 percent white.

You could say that trumps the poll, but there are many more people yet to vote and racial under currents that are so hard to predict.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And here is the Obama campaign as discussed in an article by Ryan Lizza in the January 21, 2008, edition of the New Yorker:

Did Obama experience a similar fate in New Hampshire? The evidence is murky, but his campaign believes the question is important enough to warrant study. When I asked a senior Obama adviser whether the Bradley effect was a possible explanation for the gap between the final poll numbers, which showed Obama leading by an average of eight points, and the ultimate outcome, he replied, “Definitely.” He added, “If so, then the question is: what’s different between Iowa and New Hampshire? It could be that the socially acceptable thing in front of your neighbor at a caucus could be different than what you do in a secret ballot. Obviously, that’s something we’re going to be trying to figure out as we go forward, primarily through polling. I know people are working on ways of asking questions about getting at people’s attitudes about race. We’re working on this.”

In other words, the Obama campaign cited the Bradley Effect in order to explain a loss, and the sycophantic media repeated the notion again and again and again. Apparently they received the memo from David Axelrod as votes were counted in New Hampshire. Too bad real analysis reveals that the Bradley Effect had no impact on the New Hampshire Primary.

Will CNN apologize? Will MSNBC apologize? Will the New York Times apologize? Will Slate apologize? And is it not a coincidence that after the Obama campaign decided race was the reason he lost the NH primary that the Clintons were accused of racism by the Obama campaign during the South Carolina primary? All of it was debunked in the report released today by the AAPOR. Will Obama and Axelrod apologize to Hillary and Bill Clinton?

I doubt anyone will apologize, for no one in the Obama administration or in the Obamamedia cares about facts. But at least all of us know that those of us who voted for Hillary during the New Hampshire primary and during the other primaries are not racist. Will they apologize to us?

Oh yes. We’ve covered the primary critics here:

See Larry Johnson’s slammin’ hammer, “Hey Frank. Barack is Drowning Black Folk.”

— After I read Larry’s piece, I couldn’t decide who he has the most contempt for. Barack or Frank. Heh.

And see my hot-potato piece on Monday, “[WaPo Elitist Update & TV Must-Watch] Let’s Check Timmy’s “Toxic Assets” Plan.”

– Therein I feature Paul Krugman, a personal favorite of mine. As my friends know.

Maureen Dowd? Why should we write about her?

Joe brings up some of the things Obama had said in the past, condemning the Bush White House, and the war in Iraq, and their policies of dealing with terrorists.

Before you watch the video, here are some snippets from the article. You can read the entire article here.

“Even as it pulls back from harsh interrogations and other sharply debated aspects of George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism,” the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda.

Mr. Panetta said the agency is likely to continue to transfer detainees to third countries and would rely on diplomatic assurances of good treatment — the same safeguard the Bush administration used, and that critics say is ineffective.”

So, try as he might, Joe can’t get a straight answer out of Tingle. And I do love how he now refuses to use the phrase *War on Terror*. Tingles so desperately wants to be just like Obama.

Joe makes some great points, and this is a fun interview to watch. But, be warned, it includes Chris *Tingle* Matthews.

They also touch on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, then move onto the Burris saga. Oh Roland, Roland, Roland….

Recently, Soldier4Hillary had a powerful piece on this very Bill Ayers Op-Ed, “Quiet Storm.” In it, she decried this domestic terrorist being treated as “Hail, fellow well met” by major media outlets. I could not agree more. We are not alone, thank heavens.

The other day, Paul Greenberg, the head of the editorial board for the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette, had this piece: HE’S B-A-A-ACK! Yes, the one to who he is referring is none other than “Not in prison on a technicality” Weatherman, Bill Ayers:

He lay low during the presidential campaign, and for good reason. His various connections to a neighbor named Barack Obama would have embarrassed both of them.

To hear Sen. Obama tell it during the campaign, this was just somebody he would occasionally pass on the street in Hyde Park, their upscale enclave back in Chicago. No need to go into detail about the various committees and fundraisers they’d put together for their mutual benefit. It wouldn’t do for a presidential candidate to acknowledge the depth or variety of his associations with an unrepentant terrorist out of the literally explosive 1960s.

But now that the campaign is over, Bill Ayers has resurfaced. In the New York Times, of course, where his latest apologia appeared earlier this month. Like so many distinguished old terrorists, he now denies he ever was one. A founder of the Weather Underground, which he once described as “an American Red Army,” he now says it was guilty only of “symbolic acts of extreme vandalism.”

I’m sorry, but “extreme vandalism”?? Seems like he’s still on those ’60’s drugs if this is how he now chooses to frame the terrorist activities of his “posse”:

Euphemism is still the last resort of the violent. The Weathermen, the talented Mr. Ayers explains, were guilty only of “attacks on property, never on people. … But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.”

He could have fooled me. In Weatherman’s heyday back in 1969 Chicago, aka the Days of Rage, its members attacked police and civilian targets alike. Is he now saying that they killed and injured people only discriminately?

The rhetorical distance between Bill Ayers’ old memoir, “Fugitive Days,” and the mild persona he’s now adopted on the op-ed page of the New York Times is impressive mainly for its sheer chutzpah. For in his book, which might as well have been a confession in full, he wrote proudly of having “participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972.”

Of the day he bombed the Pentagon, Bill Ayers recalled: “Everything was absolutely ideal. … The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.”

See? Nothing but a little “vandalism” going on there! Who could possibly claim that Ayers and his little gang were actually terrorists?? I mean, c’mon already! Oh, wait, Ayers wasn’t finished:

There’s a lot more of that kind of thing in his rhetoric: “There’s something about a good bomb. … Night after night, day after day, each majestic scene I witnessed was so terrible and so unexpected that no city would ever again stand innocently fixed in my mind. Big buildings and wide streets, cement and steel were no longer permanent. They, too, were fragile and destructible. A torch, a bomb, a strong enough wind, and they, too, would come undone or get knocked down.”

Mr. Ayers’ earlier defense of his terrorist past had appeared, with perfect timing, in an interview in the New York Times published on the morning of September 11, 2001. The events of that day rather took the shine off his remarks. Or were those terrorists just practicing “symbolic acts of extreme vandalism,” too?

Lest we forget, people were killed during the Weatherman’s reign of terror, notably three Weathermen — including Mr. Ayers’ then-girlfriend, Diana Oughton. They blew themselves up accidentally in their Greenwich Village town house while preparing a bomb that had been intended for an Army dance at Fort Dix.

Just because terrorism is incompetent doesn’t make it any the less terrorism. As a more honest Bill Ayers once admitted, that bomb could have done a lot more damage if it hadn’t killed the terrorists themselves, “tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people, too.” Instead, it tore through the terrorists. There is a raw justice in these matters.

I see - so attempted murder doesn’t count, then, right? Because of their own incompetence, the Murtaugh family, particularly NY State Supreme Court Justice Murtaugh, in Manhattan was not killed when they firebombed their house. So, that doesn’t count in the reign of terror - oops - “vandalism.” Oh, of course not. We were all just taking this Weather Undergound thing a little tooseriously, at least according to the BIll Ayers of today:

But the greatest violence Bill Ayers has done, and continues to do, is to the language. He now presents a campaign of terror as just vandalism, and his old speeches as just a lot of posturing. (”Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.”) Today, thanks to his remarkable forgettery, he can’t even remember saying such things.

Bill Ayers may be willing to twist the simple meaning of words, but he can’t seem to admit their power, and take responsibility for the effect his own might have had on impressionable young minds. Naturally he’s now become a professor of “education” at the University of Illinois. If he couldn’t destroy American society in his youth, maybe he can undermine the next generation in his advancing years.

And that is, in a nutshell, one of the major concerns about Bill Ayers. Not only is he completely unreprentant for his deeds, and is now trying to couch them in far less incendiary language, but it is what he is imparting to this generation (you nkow, Obama), and the next.

And speaking of Obama:

It wouldn’t be quite accurate to say Professor Ayers never made an appearance during the late presidential campaign. Fox News sent a camera crew to waylay him outside his nice home in Hyde Park. The newsmen found him wearing a shirt adorned with, of course, a big red star. And he did not welcome their attention. “This is my property,” he told them, ordering them off the place. Then the old Weatherman and cop-baiter called … the police.

The professor would seem to be all against vestiges of the old, oppressive capitalist order like private property — unless of course it’s his. His guiding philosophy isn’t communism, it’s hypocrisy. Bill Ayers’ politics and maybe life can be summed up simply enough: He’s the personification of the spoiled brat as ideologue.

Now that I’ve written this column, I almost regret it. If I hadn’t spotted his self-righteous little act in the New York Times, I might have spared both you, Gentle Reader, and me this brief review of his miserable career. The man isn’t worth wasting good time and words on. But attention must be paid, a record kept. So some future innocent won’t take his type, and hype, seriously.

Well, amen to that, but the vast majority of the media is far too complacent, even encouraging, of Ayers’ “type and hype.” Yes, vigilance is required to keep an HONEST record of what this man did, of what his group did, and how terrorized people were byt his organization. For Ayers to try to claim now that it was essentially just some spirited hijinks on his part is not only disingenuous, but dangerous. We must remember the truth, and not let him get away with his revisionist history (or that of Obama’s relationship with this man). It is far past time this man was held accountable for his actions, no matter his words.