Bloodthirsty Liberal

This ain’t no shower, and they ain’t bare-ass nekkid—but this has Rahm Emanuel’s fingerprint all over it:

Former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) has been under investigation for allegations that he groped multiple male staffers working in his office, according to three sources familiar with the probe.

The allegations surrounding the former lawmaker date back at least a year, and involve “a pattern of behavior and physical harassment,” according to one source. The new claims of alleged groping contradict statements by Massa, who resigned his office on Monday after it became public that he was the subject of a House ethics committee investigation for possible harassment.

Massa is radioactive. Doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun with him, and he wouldn’t be the first Democratic congressman who liked boys (stand in line behind—pardon the pun—Barney Frank and Gerry Studds), but he is a certified Grade A nut job.

But it’s kind of interesting that “one source” was able to spill the beans on a House investigation the day after Massa lit into Rahm Emanuel, former House member (pardon the pun).

After hinting to threaten to stay on solely to stick it in the eye of the Obama administration, Representative Massa is resigning after all:

By DAVID WEIGEL 3/8/10 5:21 PM

Tory Newmeyer confirms that Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) will resign from Congress this afternoon, ending any drama over whether he would stick around to help block health care reform legislation, and freeing him up to rant about his situation.

And rant he will:

Rep. Eric Massa’s (D-N.Y.) scorching attack on Democrats — while a lot of attention is going to a silly story about Rahm Emanuel, he accuses his party of trying to “shove the [health care] bill down our throats” — will be amplified tomorrow with a full-hour interview on Glenn Beck’s Fox News show.

Okay, the reporter may not be a fan—but how can this not be Must-See TV?

I assume we all remember when John Conyers said… well, how can I say it better than he did?:

“I’m getting tired of saving Obama’s can in the White House. I mean, he only won (health care reform) by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn’t anything to write home about. The public option is only available, which is the only way you manage cost and get some competition to 1,300 other health insurance companies, the only way he could have got that through is that progressives held their nose and voted for it anyway.

…

“You know, holding hands out and beer on Friday nights in the White House and bowing down to every nutty right-wing proposal about health care, and saying on occasion that public options aren’t all that important is doing a disservice to the Barack Obama that I first met who was an ardent single-payer enthusiast himself.

…

“That is essentially what Rahm Emanuel has said: Just give us anything and we will declare victory,” said Conyers. “Not only is it not a victory, but when it doesn’t work, guess who will come at him: the same guys that were saying let’s go along with anything… This is all my buddy Rahm Emanuel trying to get anything. But look the bill doesn’t go into effect for three years. Many of the people that we are trying to help will be dead by then.”

So what did President Obama do but hold hands and bow down to this nutty left-winger.

Let’s see where it got him:

White House officials declined to comment on an interview that Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., gave The Hill, in which he says the president “called me and told me that he heard that I was demeaning him and I had to explain to him that it wasn’t anything personal, it was an honest difference on the issues. And he said, ‘Well, let’s talk about it.’” Conyers says he told the president he wasn’t in the mood to “chat.”

And he’s not alone. The whole Congressional Black Caucus doesn’t seem to be in the chatting mood:

It seems that the Congressional Black Caucus has a bone to pick with President Barack Obama. The 43-member group recently agreed to boycott a vote on a financial overhaul measure as a sign of protest toward the Obama Administration. The bill easily passed, but Rep. Maxine Waters made it clear that the caucus could cause trouble for future Democratic bills by voting with the Republicans. The protest was in response to what the CBC considers to be a blatant disregard for African American issues by the Obama Administration.

Hey, no cutting! Take a number and wait in line like the gays, the elderly, women, independents, Arabs, Jews, doves, Wall Streeters, and all the other special interest groups who’ve known nothing but disappointment since Inauguration Day.

Martin Luther King never lived to see the day when a man would be judged not on the color of his skin, but on the content of his character. Will we?

The Democratic spin is that the losses in New Jersey and Virginia were little local difficulties—something to do with pot holes and snow removal.

Can we run the tape back four years?

ainigriV dna yesreJ weN:

Democratic House campaign committee chair Rahm Emanuel, calling First Read immediately after Kaine’s and Corzine’s victories were announced, argued that it’s clear Democratic voters were already energized earlier in the year when Democrat Paul Hackett nearly won a traditionally GOP-leaning Ohio House district. “I think that’s even more true today.” He also pointed out that the mayors of Detroit, Cleveland, and St. Paul, MN were all losing. “A lot of incumbents are losing to change,” he said. …

Plus ça change, Rahm, plus c’est la meme chose.

President Obama spent so much time in Jersey, he was starting to sound like Tony Soprano, and the quickness with which he turned on “my friend, Jon Corzine” (now labeled a weak candidate) shows he acts like him too.

Shame if something happened to it:

Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS Corp., the company spun off from Viacom.

Whether this amounted to undue pressure or plain old Chicago arm-twisting, Emanuel got results: the fourth hour of lucrative network time for his boss in six months. But network executives have been privately complaining to White House officials that they cannot afford to keep airing these sessions in the economic downturn.

The networks “absolutely” feel pressured, says Paul Friedman, CBS’s senior vice president: “It’s an enormous financial cost when the president replaces one of those prime-time hours. The news divisions also have mixed feelings about whether they are being used.”

…

Tensions have been building behind the scenes. Some television executives say the Bush administration informally floated possible news conference dates in advance, while Obama officials basically notify the networks of their plans. Such an approach prompted calls between White House officials and the top executives at each network, and a meeting between Gibbs and the Washington bureau chiefs.

Even Christ stopped at one Sermon on the Mount.

But I have to give Obama and his team for excellent management of expectations on the economy lately. Obama made reference to the GDP decline the day before it was announced, and successfully spun another quarter of recession into a titanic turnaround. (It didn’t hurt that he pinned the blame of the previous quarter solely on Bush.) Now, he’s readying our expectations for more bad unemployment news.

This is masterful. I mean it. If Bush had only spent one-tenth the time and effort explaining to people why we were fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, we wouldn’t be stuck with this socialist pant-load in the White House right now.

The way Brian Williams et al shill for this guy, we’ll be setting off firecrackers and roman candles when unemployment tops 10%.

He’s got a million of ‘em, folks. Billions, in fact. Trillions.

BARACK OBAMA: …When you rush these budgets that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what’s in them and nobody has read them.

RANDI RHODES: 14 pounds it was!

BARACK OBAMA: Yeah. And it gets rushed through without any clear deliberation or debate then these kinds of things happen. And I think that this is in some ways what happened to the Patriot Act. I mean you remember that there was no real debate about that. It was so quick after 9/11 that it was introduced that people felt very intimidated by the administration.

That was Senator Obama in 2004. I don’t know if humor is retroactive, but this guy slayed me. I laughed my ass off.

What do you think the combined poundage of the health care, crap’n'trade, stimulus, and budget bills is? I bet they weigh almost as much as the surgeon general.

But what was sauce for Bush is a sherry and cherry duck reduction glaze for Obama and Rahm Emanuel:

Chuck Todd of MSNBC describing Rahm Emanuel’s rationale for rushing legislation through congress:

CHUCK TODD: And a few things that I feel like that I’ve picked up from these guys. Number one is that they are very aware. Rahm Emanuel is Chief of staff…had experience in the Clinton White House. And he is trying to learn every lesson from those days of Clinton and apply it to Obama. So number one is, don’t deal with just one big issue. One of the reasons why, for instance, they thought health care went down is you had one issue sitting out there when Hillary Clinton introduced it. We all focused on it in the media. And the opposition got to organize and stop it. And you can kill anything in this town if you set an idea out here long enough and give the opposition time to organize and stop something. And I don’t care which side of the aisle you’re on. You can kill anything in Washington doing that. And I think they’re attacking it this way: saying we’re going to push 3 or 4 different things. Because they believe the opposition won’t have time to unite and kill all of it.

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, in other words.

So Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party?

Fine, says the “lovable little fuzzball”.

Bring…it…on:

My point here is that these are really odious, empty, nasty people who are feasting on their own arrogance. They are power hungry. But, you know what? They’ve never had a serious debate over ideas. Their goal is to destroy opponents, which is what they’re trying to do now. They don’t want to engage opponents.

…

[I]f these guys are so impressed with themselves, and if they are so sure of their correctness, why doesn’t President Obama come on my show? We will do a one-on-one debate of ideas and policies. … They’re claiming they wanted me all along. They wanted me to be the focus of attention. So let’s have the debate! I am offering President Obama to come on this program — without staffers, without a TelePrompTer, without note cards — to debate me on the issues. Let’s talk about free markets versus government control. Let’s talk about nationalizing health care and raising taxes on small business.

Let’s talk about the New Deal versus Reaganomics. Let’s talk about closing Guantanamo Bay, and let’s talk about sending $900 million to Hamas. Let’s talk about illegal immigration and the lawlessness on the borders. Let’s talk about massive deficits and the destroying of opportunities of future generations. Let’s talk about ACORN, community agitators, and the unions that represent the government employees which pour millions of dollars into your campaign, President Obama. Let’s talk about your elimination of school choice for minority students in the District of Columbia. Let’s talk about your efforts to further reduce domestic drilling and refining of oil. Let’s talk about your stock market.

…

Let’s talk about all of these things, Mr. President. Let’s go ahead and have a debate on this show. No limits. Now that your handlers are praising themselves for promoting me as the head of a political party — they think that’s a great thing — then it should be a no-brainer for you to further advance this strategy by debating me on the issues and on the merits, and wipe me out once and for all!

Just come on this program. Let’s have a little debate. You tell me how wrong I am and you can convince the rest of the American that don’t agree with you how wrong we all are. You’re a smart guy, Mr. President. You don’t need these hacks to front for you. You’ve debated the best! You’ve debated Hillary Clinton. You’ve debated John Edwards. You’ve debated Joe Biden. You’ve debated Dennis Kucinich. You’ve debated the best out there. You are one of the most gifted public speakers of our age. I would think, Mr. President, you would jump at this opportunity. Don’t send lightweights like Begala and Carville to do your bidding — and forget about the ballerina, Emanuel.

…

If you’re too busy partying or flying around giving speeches and so forth, then send Vice President Biden. I’m sure he would be very capable of articulating your vision for America…. [Now he's just being mean.]

…

I know these are tough economic times, and you’re trying to convince people that you’re “saving” the taxpayers money, that you’re cutting spending, that you’re cutting the deficit. In that vein, I, Mr. President, will send my jet, EIB One, to pick you up and bring you here and take you back to wherever you want to go. You’d love it. It’s not as big and luxurious as your jet, but it’s got enough seats for your Secret Service detail. But it is something to behold. I’m very proud of it, Mr. President. I worked for it. I paid for it. Taxpayers pay you for your travel. Nobody pays me for mine. I pay for it. I pay for the airplane. I pay for the travel. I pay for practically everything I do. We can talk about that, too. I could tell you what that’s like.

And once you land, by the way, I have a fleet of SUVs because I have guests here all the time. I have four or five SUVs. I can send a caravan to pick you up. I’ll even put you up at The Breakers. It’s a five-star resort. I’ll do it all on my dime. We don’t want the taxpayers footing any of the bill for this — and my jet burns a lot less fuel than your two and your C-130 to bring your limousine and SUV caravan here. In fact, you know what, Mr. President? I’ll tell you what I will do, if you will do this. I will promise to order some Wagu Kobe beef at $100 a pound, just like you serve at your cocktail parties and your Super Bowl parties. I’ll get it from Allen Brothers in Chicago, since you like that. I know you like $100-per-pound beef. You serve it at the White House.

But I’ll cover the cost. I will cover the cost, Mr. President, so that the taxpayers do not have to pay for it, as they did your Super Bowl party, and as they do your Wednesday afternoon cocktail party.

At this point, the ref (in the form of the FCC) called the fight (in the form of pulling the plug).

Not really. But the first two callers out of the gate were liberals, challenging Rush’s offer. Name one policy on which you ever disagreed with President Bush, the first caller demanded (as if that were relevant). Five minutes later, after Rush had enumerated (off the top of his head) the disagreements he had had with the Bush administration, he took a second caller, who demanded Rush debate Obama (or Bill Clinton on James Carville) on national TV. Again, the relevance was dubious, but Rush said my offer, my money, my terms.

But it doesn’t matter. These guys can change the subject any time they want, and I think they will. They thought they wanted a fight—and against most Republicans they’d be favorites—but my guess is that they walk away from this particular fracas.

Today President, tomorrow Caesar:

House Republicans are incensed about the prospect of the Census Bureau director reporting directly to the White House.

A senior White House official said the Obama administration intends to circumvent Commerce Secretary nominee Judd Gregg to assuage black and Hispanic leaders who had raised concerns about the New Hampshire Republican’s commitment to core functions of the department.

But that plan has produced hot-under-the-collar reactions from two leading Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. They see it as an effort by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to seize power over the politically delicate issue of counting Americans.

“Any attempt by the Obama administration to circumvent the census process for their political benefit will be met with fierce opposition as this ill-conceived proposal undermines a constitutionally obligated process that speaks to the very heart of our democracy,” said California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the committee.

Issa and North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry, the top Republican on the subcommittee that oversees census issues, sent a letter to President Obama detailing their concern that such a move might circumvent existing law and be used for partisan gain.

“Requiring the census director to report directly to the White House and placing responsibility for administration of the Bureau outside the Department of Commerce may even violate federal law,” they wrote. “According to Title 13 of the U.S. Code, the Bureau is to be administered ‘within, and under the jurisdiction of, the Department of Commerce.’ According to U.S. Code, the Executive Branch is limited to providing support for the Bureau in the form of information and resources.”

And what could be more “supportive” than having the president’s chief of staff counting heads? What’s the matter? You don’t trust the Chicago Democratic machine when it comes to counting?

It’s sinister, no question, but it’s also just dumbass.

Obama though he could be clever by picking a RINO Republican to join his cabinet (coincidentally undermining the razor-thin margin of filibuster), until the special interests in his party hollered like hell that a Republican would ignore their phantom numbers. So he has to resort to a naked political grab, and, very likely, an illegal one.

But we conservatives can’t have it both ways. He’s either dumb or he’s very, very smart. Everything he’s done since coming to power has had the ultimate goal of cementing forever the Democratic majority.

If they’re give away the store, why buy a flat-screen TV when you can loot one?

I’ve said all along that there is nothing wrong with Obama and his team talking to Governor Prisonbitch—sorry, Blagojevich about who would get the vacant Senate seat. It’s clear from all the photo ops that they were talking all the time, and Axelrod admitted they were, until he admitted they weren’t. Even Blago says the MFer-Elect would only offer him “appreciation” in return.

So why all the lies? When you’re in a hole, stop spinning (or something like that):

Obama’s confindence that no one on his team discussed his senate seat with scumbucket Blagojevich may soon be shattered. This Chicago Fox Affiliate has an exclusive that Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, spoke with Governor Rod Blagojevich on “multiple occasions” about the Senate succession of Obama’s open seat. He is likely to be on FBI wiretaps.

…

None of this means Obama or Emanuel are guilty of participating in Blago’s crimes, but it certainly shows them being less than honest. This entire scandal has damaged Obama’s halo before he has even got to sit on the throne.

Oh, I don’t know about that

Still looks pretty bright and shiny to me.

This story broke three days ago, and the news that Blago was being wiretapped came out the day before—and Blago’s shadiness was common knowledge well before that (else why the Trib’s campaign for impeachment?).

So why can’t they get their story straight?

To repeat: there’s nothing inherently wrong with discussing the subject—that Valerie Jarrett was the MFer-E’s preferred choice was common enough knowledge that I heard it on several newscasts. When she withdrew, it was clear that either she, or Obama, or Blago had other ideas. So what?

Team O might even have been involved in horse-trading, but weren’t willing to get down in the mud with Blago, as Blago himself said, though with a crudeness I can only admire. That they walked away (if they walked away) is to their credit.

So why is this such a mess for them? I’ve speculated before that when you’re a Messiah, it helps to have been immaculately conceived. We’ve bought that story all along—with Wright, Ayers, Rezko, the whole lot of crooked and wacked-out hometown Friends of Obama. Why wouldn’t we buy it again?

It’s not yet clear that we won’t—but he’s having a much harder time closing the sale.

Must be self-motivated, good with people, ability to venerate and exalt a plus:

The Obama transition team is sending a seven-page, 63-item questionnaire to every candidate for Cabinet and other high-ranking positions in the incoming administration.

The questions cover everything from information on family members, Facebook pages, blogs and hired help to links to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, American International Group and troubled banks as well as lawsuits, gifts, resumes, loans and more.

…

In an apparent effort to avoid the problems faced by several nominees in the last two administrations, a block of four questions is devoted to ferreting out details — including the immigration status — of any domestic help the applicant may have hired.

I wouldn’t worry about the line of questions. Links to Fannie and Freddie are clearly no impediment to joining this administration—see Rahm Emanuel—and if your immigration status is questionable, you can always join the Obama family if not the Obama administration.