Bloodthirsty Liberal

What’s the matter, BTL? How come you’re not crowing about the drubbing President Obama took in the elections yesterday? Republican governors winning in Virginia and… wait for it… New Jersey.

Where’s the victory dance?

No victory dance here. More like a funeral march. Not just because our clown of a mayor won his fifth term (a likable clown, I admit), but because a corrupt city councilor, caught on film accepting a bribe, won reelection with 60% of the vote:

Councilor Chuck Turner has said for months that voters would look past his federal indictment and grant him another term, and last night the five-term Roxbury councilor got his vindication: a 20-point blowout over challenger Carlos “Tony’’ Henriquez.

“It’s significant that I was reelected, but the real significance is that our community did not fall for the hype,’’ Turner, standing on a chair, told a crowd of about 50 campaign supporters who gathered at his district office in Dudley Square and chanted “Chuck! Chuck! Chuck!’’

He then ticked off a series of news media endorsements for Henriquez - from the Globe, the Herald, the Phoenix, and the South End News - as he proclaimed, to broad applause, “The people of Roxbury said, ‘The hell with you!’ ’’

…

Turner, 69, was indicted last year on charges that he accepted $1,000 in cash in exchange for helping a nightclub win a liquor license. Turner has strongly denied the charges, pointing to his beat-up Mazda and his modest home as evidence that he does not live a high-end lifestyle.

…

A dozen voters interviewed yesterday afternoon at the Orchard Gardens Community Center in Roxbury were almost evenly divided between Turner and Henriquez. Those who supported Turner either did not believe the charges against him, did not care about them, or thought they should be overlooked.

…

In his speech at his district office, Turner cited the victories of other City Council candidates of color as an indication of a new direction in Boston. “Martin [Luther King Jr.] said I’m not going to be there with you, but I know you’re going to get to the mountaintop,’’ he said. “I don’t think this is arrogant, but I think we’re on the mountaintop.’’

Why, because there’s a pot of gold there?

Is there anything sicker and sadder than a corrupt, slimy, opportunist wrapping himself in the mantle of a hero? Has the legacy of MLK really been so degraded that a crooked hack can celebrate a meaningless election by exploiting the historic and resonant words King spoke prophesying his own death?

Enjoy, citizens of Virginia and New Jersey, you have much to celebrate. Me, I’m going to drape my house with black bunting.

Sometimes we’re more serious than others when we employ the Liberal Fascism category.

This time we’re deadly serious:

[A] police officer recognized gangbangers, who discovered him and threatened him after discovering where he lived.

…

How would you like to be a New Jersey police officer and look out your window and see several known criminals, including a man you arrested several weeks ago and another who had just been released from prison for shooting a cop? And then find out that the men were sent into the neighborhood by the Democratic Party for GOTV operations – complete with lists of voters names, addresses and phones numbers!

That is what happened Sunday on a quiet street in Morris Township. The officer, who’s name we are with holding, specifically heard the men discussing that he was a police officer and that they now know where he lives. The officer confronted the men and they took off. He contacted the local police who responded and caught up with them and about a dozen other men a few blocks away. According to the police report, the men were known criminals and when asked why they were in the neighborhood they stated they were “campaigning for the Democratic Party.”

My question in the title is entirely serious. Why use cop-shooters and other known criminals to break in—knock on doors, when the New Black Panthers are just down the road in Philly?

They know all about poll monitoring, and the precedent is all set: they won’t be charged.

Oops! Who let the greedy, slimy, shady cat out of the bag?

House ethics investigators have been scrutinizing the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July.

…

– Ethics committee staff members have interviewed House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) about one element of the complex investigation of his personal finances, as well as the lawmaker’s top aide and his son.

…

– The Justice Department has told the ethics panel to suspend a probe of Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), whose personal finances federal investigators began reviewing in early 2006 after complaints from a conservative group that he was not fully revealing his real estate holdings. There has been no public action on that inquiry for several years. But the department’s request in early July to the committee suggests that the case continues to draw the attention of federal investigators, who often ask that the House and Senate ethics panels refrain from taking action against members whom the department is already investigating.

…

– The committee on June 9 authorized issuance of subpoenas to the Justice Department, the National Security Agency and the FBI for “certain intercepted communications” regarding Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). As was reported earlier this year, Harman was heard in a 2005 conversation agreeing to an Israeli operative’s request to try to obtain leniency for two pro-Israel lobbyists in exchange for the agent’s help in lobbying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to name her chairman of the intelligence committee. The department, a former U.S. official said, declined to respond to the subpoena. [Okay, so they’re not all corrupt. Ed.]

…

Because of the secretive nature of the ethics committee, it was difficult to assess the current status of the investigations cited in the July document. The panel said Thursday, however, that it is ending a probe of Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) after finding no ethical violations, and that it is investigating the financial connections of two California Democrats.

The committee did not detail the two newly disclosed investigations. However, according to the July document, Rep. Maxine Waters, a high-ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, came under scrutiny because of activities involving OneUnited Bank of Massachusetts, in which her husband owns at least $250,000 in stock.

Waters arranged a September 2008 meeting at the Treasury Department where OneUnited executives asked for government money. In December, Treasury selected OneUnited as an early participant in the bank bailout program, injecting $12.1 million.

The other, Rep. Laura Richardson, may have failed to mention property, income and liabilities on financial disclosure forms.

Of all the bad luck! How did so many Democrats get nabbed?

How come it’s okay to be crooked if you’re a black Democrat? Is it the Democrat part that excuses you, or the black part? (Neither helped William Jefferson, so I’m sure he’d like to know.)

Charlie Rangel doesn’t pay taxes (though he does write the tax code):

House Republicans on Wednesday attempted to pass a resolution to remove Rangel from his chairmanship following the reading of a long and stinging list of alleged wrongdoing. The measure stemmed from a major ethics probe into Rangel’s alleged failure to pay his taxes and disclose income on multiple properties — as much as $1.3 million.

But House Democrats were quick to strike down the measure to oust Rangel, who represents New York’s Harlem district. House Republicans refused to accept defeat of the resolution, and asked for a second recorded vote following the first. The reading of the resolution was interrupted several times, and at one point was challenged by Democrats before being put to a vote.

Wednesday’s vote came as reports emerge that Rangel funneled a $3 million earmark — included in the massive Defense Appropriations Bill — to City College of New York to fund research on materials used to protect Army vehicles from attack.

Critics charge that the powerful chairman of the tax-writing committee — arguably the most influential in Congress — should step down amid growing allegations and investigations into possible ethics violations.

Locally, City Councilman Chuck Turner, caught with his hand in the cookie jar, easily won his primary:

Ten months after his arrest on corruption charges, Chuck Turner is charging toward reelection.

The Boston city councilor, whose image was splashed across the news last November in what the FBI said was a picture of Turner accepting a cash bribe, easily won a four-way preliminary election Sept. 22, with nearly 53 percent of the vote. Under indictment, Turner still got more than twice the votes of his nearest challenger. He called it “a resounding mandate.’’

“This, to me, was them saying, ‘Chuck, we know you’re innocent,’ ’’ Turner said in an interview in his office last week, sitting beneath a portrait of Malcolm X and a hand-scrawled sign marking the months until his federal corruption trial.

The councilor, who said his arrest was a calculated effort to “take down a black politician,’’ is seeking vindication on two fronts: at the ballot box on Nov. 3 and in a federal courtroom in March.

As an equal opportunity blogger, I wish to point out that neither Turner nor Rangel, is a two-time convicted drunk driver, now an accused (and confessed) hit-and-run driver, like State Senator Anthony Galluccio:

State Senator Anthony D. Galluccio apologized yesterday for rear-ending a family of four on Sunday afternoon and fleeing the scene, an accident that left one person with minor injuries, a Cambridge neighborhood shaken by his actions, and questions about what prompted his lapses behind the wheel.

It is the latest chapter in Galluccio’s checkered driving history: The 42-year-old senator has had repeated problems, including at least two previous accidents involving alcohol. In an interview yesterday, Galluccio refused to say whether he had been drinking alcohol before Sunday’s incident.

The Cambridge Democrat hit the family’s car with enough force that he left an imprint of his license plate on their van, which helped police track and cite him Monday with leaving the scene of an accident.

That’s pretty funny, you have to admit. Why don’t you stick to graft, Anthony, so nobody gets hurt?

Anybody want to bet that all three of the above win their reelection campaigns? I didn’t think so.

Our journalists are clowns:

And our clowns are journalists:

What do you want to bet that this was the first most of Jay’s audience had heard about the story?

I bet our national media would omit reporting the deaths of millions if it suited their political purposes. Oh wait, that already happened.

Bet’s off.

according to biggovernment.com

Big Government is the site that has all the original ACORN videos. They have a breaking news item saying that the House has voted to defund ACORN. Don’t know if it is true, but sure HOPE© so because we need CHANGE©.

Update: It’s true. The newswires are carrying it now. Here’s bloomberg

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. House of Representatives voted today to cut off all federal funding for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now after reports that some of the group’s employees gave tax and housing advice to people who said they ran a prostitution business.

The motion passed 345-75 during debate on legislation to end federally subsidized private student loans. The bill now goes to the Senate.

“Acorn’s abuse of the public trust and disregard for the responsibilities that come with receiving taxpayer funding are disturbing,” said Representative Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican.

An investigation too:

Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, said his office is conducting a criminal investigation of Acorn. He declined to elaborate.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is monitoring that probe and will ensure any taxpayer money related to Acorn was used correctly, according to his spokesman, Richard Bamberger.

Huh. Two kids, combined age of 45, pulled this off. I am impressed.

- Aggie

Usually you tune in here to read about the UN’s anti-Semitism.

But that we have a story about a different UN disgrace is not even the biggest surprise.

What’s an even bigger surprise is that it appeared in the Boston Globe:

THE UNITED NATIONS Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has a mandate to encourage “free, fair, inclusive and transparent elections.’’ But according to the mission’s number-two official, former US diplomat Peter Galbraith of Cambridge, the United Nations is prepared to accede to fraudulent vote counts in last month’s presidential election. This is deeply wrong. As President Obama faces a decision on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, the flagrant cheating in favor of President Hamid Karzai, a US ally, is a grim sign that political reconciliation is a long way off.

Galbraith favored a tough stance against fraud, and rightly so. In one polling center Karzai got 4,054 of 4,054 votes cast. In Kandahar province, where 25,000 people voted, more than 250,000 votes were recorded for Karzai. So Galbraith prodded the Afghan election commission - six of whose seven members are Karzai loyalists - to throw out transparently bogus results from about 1,000 of 6,500 polling stations and to recount ballots from as many as 5,000 others. Had the commission done so, Karzai likely would face a runoff against his main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.

Galbraith returned home to New England after his boss, UN official Kai Eide of Norway, insisted that the mission allow the Afghan election commission to proceed with a pro forma recount of votes from only 10 to 15 percent of polling stations - not the sweeping exclusion of obviously bogus ballots that Galbraith sought. The foreseeable outcome of the United Nations’ capitulation will be a first-round victory for Karzai.

What, is Karzai a member of ACORN or something? Why does he have our backing? The Taliban may be repressive, murderous neanderthals, but I bet they’re pious repressive, murderous neanderthals.

I’m serious when I say that as long as we reserve the right to blow up the place from the safety of 50,000 feet, we should get the hell out. We were right to go in, right to slaughter and scatter the Taliban—maybe a little less right to try to build them a nation, and hardly right at all to stay. Iraq was worth the effort, and the effort has begun to pay off. If someone can make the case that Afghanistan has anything like a cultural history worth restoring, I’d like to hear it. The Taliban have already blown up the Bamiyan buddhas; is there anything left?

As I think about it, the Taliban are probably more of a threat to Pakistan than to Afghanistan. Pakistan is armed with nukes, and borders India, which is also armed with nukes. So, I don’t know, maybe we do have to stay. On the other hand, maybe a few well placed hydrogen bombs in the tribal borderlands would clear out a no-man’s-land. Yeah, that might do it. Worth a try.

Vince Foster, meet Christopher Kelly (Or do I mean Norman Hsu? Or Marc Rich? Or William Jefferson?):

Over the weekend, Rod Blagojevich’s former chief fundraiser, Christopher Kelly, died after his girlfriend found him over his car wheel in a lumberyard.

Kelly was about to check in to the Graybar Hotel before his death:

Kelly was facing at least eight years in prison after pleading guilty to fraud charges in two separate cases, and he was scheduled to start serving his time on Friday. Kelly was part of the former governor’s inner circle, and as chairman of Blagojevich’s campaign fund, he presided over a political war chest of millions of dollars. But at the time of his death, Kelly had run up thousands of dollars in personal debts was believed to be strapped for cash. He was facing three years in prison for hiding $1.3 million in income, including company money he used to pay gambling debts that he wrote off as business expenses. He was facing five additional years for taking part in an $8.5 million fraud involving roofing work on United Air Lines and American Airlines hangars at O’Hare International Airport. And still to come was a trial in a sweeping indictment that charged Blagojevich, Kelly and four other men with planning several fraudulent deals involving state government and millions of dollars in kickbacks.

…

Kelly served as part of Blago’s wheeler-dealer Kitchen Cabinet along with convicted fraudster Tony Rezko.

Rezko had loaned money to his business partner and fellow Blago confidante Kelly, who had schemed to evade the IRS by using ill-gotten gains to pay off his massive debts.

…

Rezko, of course, served as an ardent fund-raiser for Saint Obama and cooked up his sweetheart real estate trade in Chicago, land of coincidences.

And that’s not all. As I recount in Culture of Corruption, now-Attorney General Eric Holder signed up to assist Blago in a casino license battle in 2004. The state’s gaming board had approved the construction of a disputed casino, overruling the recommendation of the board’s staff. Rank-and-file investigators had qualms over the casino developer’s alleged mob ties and over Blago’s appointment of a crony fund-raiser to oversee the state’s deal-making with the casino. The fund-raiser was…

… Christopher Kelly.

…

Somehow, the foul-smelling case slipped Holder’s mind; he failed to mention it in his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

That’s Michelle Malkin connecting the dots.

Another perspective:

“We have a sick political culture,” said Jay Stewart, the executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, “and that’s the environment that Barack Obama came from. Stewart says he does not understand why Obama has lectured others about corruption in Washington and Kenya but “been noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state, including at this point, mostly Democratic politicians.”

Can you blame the guy? Jesse Jackson is from Illinois, and recall what he said about Obama “talking down to black people” (”cut his nuts off”). These Democratic thugs would go further, and stick his severed manhood down his throat.

That’s not a typo or a transliteration of Barney Frank-speak:

The reigning member of Congress’ top tax committee is apparently “wrangling” other politicos to get him out of his own financial and tax troubles.

Here’s a look at Charlie’s so-called “angels” involved in his ethics investigation.

Congressman Rangel has been arrogant in refusing to discuss how, as the man who writes this country’s tax laws, he failed to report over $1 million in outside income and $3 million in business transactions as required by the House, lapses under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.

…

There may be a reason for Rangel’s arrogance. CBS 2 HD has discovered that since ethics probes began last year the 79-year-old congressman has given campaign donations to 119 members of Congress, including three of the five Democrats on the House Ethics Committee who are charged with investigating him.

I’m sort of into old-fashioned punishments today. Tarring and feathering may have some unpleasant racial associations, so how about the stocks? Lock him up in Times Square next to a bushel of overripe field tomatoes bused in from Jersey and let the people have their say.

But he’s still aces with Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

For now:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs to remove Rangel from his Ways & Means chairmanship.

He has long since lost the credibility necessary for a sensitive House position — and if Pelosi doesn’t move on Rangel soon, she’s going to be in the same boat.

Scoot over, Charles. Make room for a… a… well, a lady, I guess.

They’re getting houses too!

(Reuters) – A leading Democrat in the House of Representatives who has rebuffed Republican efforts to subpoena records of a mortgage program for favored borrowers at Countrywide Financial Corp got home loans from that lender, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Representative Edolphus Towns, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, obtained two loans from Countrywide, which was bought last year by Bank of America, the newspaper said, citing information from the lawmaker’s mortgage documents.

Towns has turned down calls from the committee’s ranking Republican, Darrell Issa, for the panel to subpoena mortgage records showing who received loans through Countrywide’s VIP program, the journal said.

Is this the slimiest administration since Nixon? Do we have to go back further to find more cynicism and graft? Or is this the slimiest administration of all time?

And how long before Barack Obama personally goes after the Wall Street Journal?

- Aggie