So let’s break it down:

1. Large group of Americans gather to protest taxes, spending and a rapacious government.
2. Leftymedia large, small and anonymous embarks on concerted effort to paint protesters as “extremists” and “radicals” (when not tittering like a bunch of seventh-graders), spending hours and pages of media time and space attacking protests that, let us not forget, don’t matter.
3. DHS releases a report that depicts pretty much every American to the right of Arne Carlson as a slavering Bircher.

Coincidence?

To: Anderson Cooper

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Your 4/15 cablecast

Mr. Cooper,

Sitting back, I can think of many times, chatting away with my project-mates in the bullpen, where I’d unwrap a bag of Earl Grey or Rooibos and dunk it in hot water, without interrupting my verbal train of thought.

I’ve also wondered about the cognitive logistics of that more metaphorical, historical tea-related moment, the Boston Tea Party – and not only do I believe that hauling bales of tea leaves would not pose a cognitive obstacle to speech, but having worked a few heavy manual labor jobs, I’ll tell you that talking, even yelling, are perfectly normal while hauling heavy things.  One might reasonably suppose that dropping or throwing lighter amounts – say, individual bags through boxes – would present even less of an obstacle.

There is, of course, another definition of “teabagging”, well known to anyone who has been in fourth grade – utterly unrelated to the previous two examples, but which would, perforce, make talking difficult.

Now, on your April 15 broadcast, you quipped “it’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging“.

As I demonstrated above, that’s only true with one meaning of the term.

So Mr. Cooper, question one: it’d logically seem that you’re referring to the latter definition of the term; in addition, you said your quip with such an air of first-person authority; how indeed do you know it’s “hard to talk” while “teabagging?”

And on second thought, given the inevitable, if somewhat distateful and/or juvenile answer to the first question, the second question (“how did someone with no demonstrable talent or experience for the job other than perfect silver-gray politics and hair to match ever get a job as a CNN talk show host?”) is rendered, it seems, moot.

Thanks. Sorry for the imposition.

That is all.

NOTE: To be fair to Cooper, he’s better than Matt Taibbi, “policial correspondent” for bleeding-edge magazine Rolling Stone.

When the word got out that President Obama was being fairly hands-off on the Captain Phillips crisis, some conservatives complained.

Not I.  I figured if there is a situation a President needs to delegate, this one – a fast-breaking crisis on the razor’s edge of life and death – is the one.  It should be the kind of situation where a President – and the next several echelons below him – say “we’ll seek a diplomatic solution, but you, the commander on the scene, need to use your discretion; you’ve trained for this sort of thing your whole career.  If there’s a threat to the hostage, you use your discretion, and I’ll back you on it”.

And if that’s how Obama would have handled things, I’d have nodded and said “Good job, Mr. President”, not that anyone cares.

But that’s apparently not how it happened:

Late last week, when it did not want it to appear that the president was acting like a cowboy, the Administration was content to say that Obama was taking a low key approach to the pirate hostage drama, leaving the decision making to others and perhaps hedging against a bad result.

So far, so good.

But once news of Phillips’ rescue reached the United States, the Administration was quick to try and claim at least a share of the credit for the president.

Was it the President’s handlers who did this?  Likely enough.  It’s Obama’s staff and minions and Congressional support that are the bulk of the problems with this Administration in the first place.

It is not quite shameless exploitation – presidents always get more credit, and blame, than they likely deserve for events that happen under their watch – but it is playing politics.

As a legislator, President Obama had the luxury of taking both sides of an issue to position himself politically. But as president, especially in matters of national security, the president does not have that luxury, and he cannot seek it. Perhaps with more experience, President Obama will be able to chart a course and be willing to accept the consequences of his decisions, good and bad. But in the events of the last week off the coast of Africa, President Obama showed himself to be not yet ready to act decisively before knowing how the political winds will blow.

Bill Clinton was accused of the same thing – but then, the “threats” he faced (the ones that weren’t bomb attacks that resolved themselves instantly, anyway) were all to his political power, not the nation.

For six years, I’ve had to listen to lefties barbering about the supposed butchery of civil liberties under Bush.  They are never, of course, able to actually specify any civil liberties being denied American citizens, but no matter; they’re on a roll!

Among the few who do attempt to answer the question, the common thread seems to be something along the lines of “Bush wants to do away with Habeas Corpus”.

Now, I think it’s become nearly axiomatic; when a liberal issues a group defamation of conservatives, there will either be some such behavior in the recent past, or there will be that exact behavior – beknownst or otherwise to the speaker – in the near future.  So axiomatic is it that I am going to coin “Berg’s Seventh Law of Leftyblog Behavior” to taxonomize it.[*]
…well, take a read:

The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight.In a court filing, the Justice Department also asked District Judge John D. Bates not to proceed with the habeas-corpus cases of three detainees at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Afghanistan. Judge Bates ruled last week that the three — each of whom says he was seized outside of Afghanistan — could challenge their detention in court.

So the new law is: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are projecting”.
(more…)

Have you noticed how many crises and near-crises are, to the media, “distractions” from the really important news (like the new Obama puppy)?

Mark Steyn certainly has:

Tom Blumer of Newsbusters notes that in the last 30 days there have been some 2,500 stories featuring Obama and “distractions,” as opposed to about 800 “distractions” for Bush in his entire second term. The sub-headline of the Reuters story suggests the unprecedented pace at which the mountain of distractions is piling up: “First North Korea, Iran — now Somali pirates.”Er, okay. So the North Korean test is a “distraction,” the Iranian nuclear program is a “distraction,” and the seizure of a U.S.-flagged vessel in international waters is a “distraction.” Maybe it would be easier just to have the official State Department maps reprinted with the Rest of the World relabeled “Distractions.” Oh, to be sure, you could still have occasional oases of presidential photo-opportunities — Buckingham Palace, that square in Prague — but with the land beyond the edge of the Queen’s gardens ominously marked “Here be distractions . . . ”

Why, it’s almost as if the mainstream media want the whole world to cooperate with a triumphalistic narrative they’ve already written, in which the Obamessiah and his Hope and Change sweeps all the world’s benightedness before it!

Or something like that.

NOTE TO FLASH:  This piece is a commentary on the media’s kid-gloves treatment of Obama.  Not, as it happens, on his performance in the pirate standoff.

Chris Cilizza may think you’re hot stuff, but around here, you’re still just Flash. 🙂

Obama reaches out to ‘Moderate’ Pirates:

For too long, America has been too dismissive of the proud culture and invaluable contributions of the Pirate Community. Whether it is their pioneering work with prosthetics, husbandry of tropical birds or fanciful fashion sense, America owes a deep debt to Pirates.

The past eight years have shown a failure to appreciate the historic role of these noble seafarers. Instead of celebrating their entreprenuerial spirit and seeking to partner with them to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

Oh, of course it’s satire.

As far as you know, anyway.

Obama shows himself a rank amateur in Turkey:

The Europeans were appalled by Turkey’s neo-Taliban tantrum on-stage at last week’s NATO summit. The Turks fought to derail the appointment of a great Dane, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as the new NATO secretary general. Why? Because he didn’t stone to death the Danish cartoonist who caricatured Mohammed.

Which brings us to the even bigger problem: Obama has no idea what’s going on in Turkey. By going to Ankara on his knees, he gave his seal of approval to a pungently anti-American Islamist government bent on overturning Mustapha Kemal’s legacy of the separation of mosque and state.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, the AKP, means headscarves, Korans, censorship and stacked elections. The country’s alarmed middle class opposes the effort to turn the country into an Islamic state. Obama’s gushing praise for the AKP’s bosses left them aghast.

Obama’s embrace of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (now orchestrating show trials of his opponents) was one step short of going to Tehran and smooching President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Give him time.

Remember – Obama’s the “smart one”.

Whenever liberals can’t take you on the facts – and let’s face it, they very rarely can – they go below the belt, literally or figuratively.

Jeff Rosenberg reprises a zillion lefties going after a zillion conservatives in a lefty tradition dating back to the Daisy Ad in going after Represenative Michele Bachman, the second-term Rep and unapologetic conservative from the Sixth District.

She doesn’t fit the template of what a woman is supposed to be (zealously pro-abortion, mindlessly subservient to the party on all else), so – just as with Margaret Thatcher and Linda Chavez and Condi Rice before her, and Sarah Palin after her, no insult, degradation or slander is off-limits.  Nothing pisses a liberal off like an “apostate”, even if the betrayal is only against their parochial notion of a policital gender role.

Just think about some of her recent rhetoric. During the election, she called for an inquiry into whether members of Congress had “anti-American views.”

She didn’t “call for an inquiry”.  She said the media ought to report on some of the less savory views of some of her colleagues.

Recently, she’s called herself a “foreign correspondent behind enemy lines”

An outspoken conservative woman in Minnesota’s browbeaten, lumpen liberal feminist culture? I’d say she’s more of a commando on a mission in an enemy headquarters.

But wait – we of the “Northern Alliance” use the same precise rhetoric every week! Are we not traitors to the glorious Minnesota motherland too?

and called for Minnesotans to be “armed and dangerous.”

Law-abiding Minnesotans should be armed, and dangerous to criminals.  It is, in point of irrefutable fact, the duty of every law-abiding Minnesotan who does not wish to be,at least ethically, a drag on the rest of society to be proficient with firearms, and to carry a firearm about their daily busiess.

She seems unable to control herself.

Now, Jeff is not one of the creepy, bottom-of-the-barrel leftybloggers that clog this state.

But, er, Jeff?  “She seems” is what we call “weasel words”.

Now she sees even the most benign Federal programs in stark, revolutionary terms. Here’s what she said about a proposed expansion of the AmeriCorps service program:

I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.

Increasingly, Bachmann seems unable to focus on her day-to-day responsibilities to her district and her country.

Well, actually, calling out the abuses and overreaches of our current liberal overlords is  part of her job; it’s certainly what she ran on, and what her constituents sent her to do.

Oh, and as re: proposals to morph Americorps into a compulsory social service program?  She’s right. Oh, yes she is.

The real question, given the orgy of spending and social tinkering the Democrats are committing to, is “who are the real crazy ones?”

…another promising career….sacrificed in the name of Hopey Changey^®.

In case you haven’t heard (because its so relevant to the average American) Kal Penn’s character, Dr.  Lawrence Kutner offed himself on last night’s “Can’t! Miss!!!^®” episode of House, M.D., and they are making an insipid attempt to make it “real” with a tribute video and memorial web site.

The next day (he should have waited three, maybe?) he is resurrected.

Actor and longtime Obama supporter Kal Penn is joining the Obama administration, the White House confirmed to CNN Tuesday.

What’s he going to be doing, what with all the qualifications he now possesses, having not been a doctor but playing one on TV?

The actor will be part of the White House Office of Public Liaison, which is run by Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Penn will be primarily involved in dealing with Asian American and Pacific Islander communities and the arts community.

Come again? So he’ll be liaising (yes, its now a word) with Obama and his peeps.

Not what you’d call a lateral move.

I wish I had written this take down of Obama sans teleprompter…

“A question for you both, if I may. The prime minister has repeatedly blamed the United States of America for causing this crisis. France and Germany both blame Britain and America for causing this crisis. Who is right? And isn’t the debate about that at the heart of the debate about what to do now?”

Jimmy II, can I lend a hand? Start with Barney Frank.

Brown immediately swivels to leave Obama in pole position. There is a four-second delay before Obama starts speaking [click here for the rest]

Cheeky Brits.

Guaranteed…had it not been an April Fool’s Joke.

Obama Changes NASCAR by Ordering GM and Chrysler Out

The list (click above) of those outlets that fell for it is pretty interesting…and bi-partisan.

Touche’ Car and Driver!

…then again…who can blame them for falling for it…anything goes in this administration.

Do I have to go the Post Office for warranty repairs on my Suburban now?

The national media loves Michele Bachmann; conservative media have made her probably the most-booked member of the House’s sophomore class because she is a no-holds-barred, no-compromise conservative Ultimate Fighter who is both telegenic and, usually, much more articulate than the typical pol.  Watching or listening to most politicians is indistinguishable from reading their press releases; Bachmann’s got style.

Leftymedia like her because, ironically, she’s got style; as noted here before, she’s not measured and calculating; she speaks from her heart, which is on a specially-built structure way ahead of her sleeve. When she gets on a rhetorical roll, she can be a little like Captain Wild Bill Kelso.

Of course, this being Minnesota, our in-the-bag mainstream media and too-often-deranged lefty “alternative” media will focus on Bachmann to exclusion (as their masters demand).

Fortunately, we have a conservative altmedia these days that can spread the joy around a little bit.  Brian at Fraters has been doing the gumshoe gatekeeping that the rest of the Twins’ media refuses to in re my “representative”, Betty “Rubble” McCollum.  He presents three posts and counting ( here, here and here) of Rep. McCollum’s gaffes.

One consistent theme is McCollum’s tendency to use unnecessary, dramatic adjectives. Example, her comments on the never ending Coleman-Franken election recount:

“Now that the state Canvassing Board has certified Mr. Franken as the winner of Minnesota’s Senate seat, following an exceptionally transparent, bipartisan, and meticulous recount process, it is time for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to immediately seat Mr. Franken to ensure that Minnesotans have full representation in the U.S. Senate.”

Betty McCollum’s hierarchy of transparency:— buttered slice of 7-grain bread: slightly transparent
—- jar of Vaseline: moderately transparent
—— pane of glass: very transparent
——– Minnesota’s election recount process: exceptionally transparent

Oh, there’s more.  Much more. Check it out.

First Ringer from TvM did.  And he notes:

The real reason no one cares to make the slightest issue out of any “oops!” statement Betty McCollum makes is that she’s safely entrenched in her seat.  Short of cutting a campaign commerical with a heroin needle in one arm and a bottle of Jack Daniels cradled in the other, McCollum will be repeatedly returned to Washington by 30 or 40-point margins.  As Fraters‘ Brian “St. Paul” Ward bemoans, “the combination of the belief that she is called on to save the world and her control over US taxpayer dollars, which she believes to be unlimited, is a toxic asset and a prescription for disaster…Does the bubble ever pop on these people?”

They used to say that the only way for a Democrat to lose office in Chicago was to be caught with a live boy or a dead girl.  I’d say “it’s the other way around for McCollum”, but in the Fourth District, I’m not even that sure.

As Minnesotans tighten their belts, DFL Attorney General Lori Swanson spends the equivalent of ten typical peoples’ incomes giving her offices some TLC.

Ryan Flynn at MDE:

What most of people never see is the office where the attorney general actually works in the Capitol. It’s behind the main reception area away from public view.

And, at taxpayer’s expense, nearly $400,000 of repairs and alterations have been done since 2006 at the attorney general’s office at the Capitol and at offices in downtown St. Paul.

Wasn’t that the kind of thing that got people exercised about AIG?

The NY20 special election is nearly a dead heat:

The race in the 20th Congressional district between Republican Jim Tedisco and Democrat Scott Murphy is too close to call.

Advertisement

With 100 percent precincts reporting, Murphy leads Tedisco by only 59 votes, 77,344 to 77,285.

With nearly 6,000 absentee ballots that will essentially decide the race as of Monday, the election will not be decided at least until April 13.

Many regard the race – in which Tedisco, a GOP challenger, seeks to flip the seat formerly held by the rep who got promoted to Senator to replace now-Secretary-of-State Hillary Clinton – as a referendum on President Obama.  I don’t see it quite that way; we’re barely two months into Obama’s epoch of joy term. The real referendum is coming in about 19 months.

Still, it’d be nice to flip a seat so early in the reign of enlightenment Obama’s term.

Financial advisors are by no means infallible but tend to work with clients that plan for the future, heavily discount  government’s role in their planning, and are self-employed. As such, they probably tend to have a pretty good handle on what drives investors and the economy – not to mention often times being self employed themselves.
What say they regarding our governments efforts to salvage our economy?

from Financial Planning Magazine yesterday:

Brinker Capital, an investment management firm, published its Brinker Barometer, a gauge of financial advisor confidence and sentiment related to the economy and the markets. It concluded that advisors across the industry are skeptical of the government’s attempts to shore up the economy. “Financial advisors continue to be concerned about the state of the U.S. economy and are critical of the Obama Administration’s efforts to introduce a meaningful stimulus package,” said John Coyne, president of Brinker Capital, in a public statement. “Fully 77% of respondents say the final stimulus plan will not be effective, while 88% of advisors contend that the plan itself was not the product of a bipartisan effort.”

About 43% of advisors surveyed said that government’s efforts should have job creation as the top priority. Tax cuts came in second at 30%, with housing and mortgage relief third at 16%.

How about Mr. Obama himself?

When asked to grade President Obama’s performance so far with a mock school-grading system, nine percent gave him an “A,” while 66% graded him between “C” and “F.”

Despite the Governments worst (and predictable given the current administration) efforts, advisors think that the markets, in anticipation of the economy, will improve – albeit slowly – despite the Obama Administrations ill-advised tactics.

Sixty percent of respondents think that the economy will emerge from recession in 2010. And more than one-third of respondents believe that it will take more than six years’ for portfolios to recoup their losses.

Just in time for Obama to take credit although it will be too late as his supporters will have realized by then that they are still making their own mortgage payments and filling their own tanks with gas.

So the banks – some of them, anyway, who bet long on toxic assets and lent like 14 year olds with too-big-allowances – are in trouble.  The government, rightly or (koff, koff) wrongly, is stepping in and socializing the major bank industry in all but name, and spreading the love downstream with an immense “stimulus” program that promises money to just about everyone.

The question is, how is this going to be paid for?

“Borrowing?”  Sure – but eventually loans need to be paid back (unless the government has ordered Fannie and Freddie to underwrite the loans, but that doesn’t apply in this situation).  And that’ll be “The taxpayer”

Who is this “taxpayer?”

Well, let’s find out who it’s not.

For starters, let’s leave out the 91 million Americans who pay no tax at all, leaving 209 million people to pay taxes.

Who are the patriarchs who caused the problem?  Men!  That leaves out the 51% of the population that are women, taking us down to 98 million.

Remove those in State and Federal prison, (3.8 million), as well as the 3% of Americans on parole (another 9 million), and you’re at just under 86 million people on the hook for these plans.

Of course, you can’t count the 73.5 million Americans who are below age 18, obviously.  They’re kids.  It’s not their fault.  That leaves 12.5 million of  us – except we’re going to have to leave out 10 million illegal immigrants, leaving us at 2.5 million), the military (since they’re busy), the employees of federal and state governments (since they’ll be the ones solving the problem and…

…that leaves two Americans.  You, and me.  We are the ones who are going to wind up paying for all this.

(more…)

Barack Obama was going to fix America’s image to the rest of the planet.

After insulting European democracies, giving the Soviets Joe Biden.

Really, just saying the name is all you need. On a trip to Spain, Biden thanked Prime Minister Zapatero for his “help” in Iraq:

As everybody knows, the first decision Zapatero made after his unexpected win in 2004, right after the Madrid train terrorist attacks, was to abruptly and unilaterally pull out from Iraq.

Of course, as with all things in the current administration, there is a rational explanation:

So either Biden made a gaffe, or he was thanking Zapatero for angering Bush…

What do you think Robert Gibbs’ll say?

CORRECTION:  My bad.  Gibbs will never be asked.

One of the most galling memes of the last eight years was the notion, passed on by thousands of talking-point-gurgitating, historically-illiterate, but sometimes well-meaning lefties at all levels of the media, alt-media and society, was that the Democrats – the party of the NRO, the CCC, the WPA, the Great Society, Ted Kennedy, Tip O’Neil and Phyllis Kahn – were the party of “fiscal responsibility”.

Especially this past eight years,when we were saddled with a president and Congress who spent like crack whores with stolen gold cards (by the standards we were used to anyway), allowing the Tics to frame the debate entirely in terms of “balanced budgets” and deficits, rather than spending.

Of course, we knew the meme was a bunch of baked wind. We merely hoped the US wouldn’t have to find out with the greatest lesson in negative consequences in the history of the free world.

But that’s pretty much what’s gonna happen:

Already in the first 45 days of his administration, the federal government has authorized more debt spending than Ronald Reagan did in eight years in office.Then last week the Democrats’ own Congressional Budget Office found that the ten-year deficits of the Obama plan will be about $2.3 trillion higher than the $6.97 trillion the White House is projecting. This is the policy of the party that was swept back into power in 2006 and 2008 promising a return to an era of fiscal responsibility.

Welcome to the Obama doctrine.

“Tax and Spend” is the meme we on the right have assigned to liberal policy for several generations now.  It was pretty much a breezy device, in retrospect, compared to today, where Obama proposes to spend ghastly, brain-spinning sums today in exchange for job-killing, growth-shredding, future-mortgaging taxes tomorrow.

But the news on the red ink front is much worse than the president or even the CBO’s budget report suggests. If all of Obama’s “transformational” policy objectives–from global warming taxes to universal health care to doubling the Department of Energy’s budget–are enacted, the debt is likely
to increase from about 40 percent of GDP today to close to 100 percent of GDP by 2018. The ten-year debt is likely to be at least $6 trillion higher–or more than one-half trillion of higher deficits a year from now until forever–than the Obama budget projects.

These are uncharted levels of debt for the United States–though not for such high-flying nations as Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico.

To be fair, Obama did promise change.

We’re changing into a third world country.

A couple hours ago I posted:
“…I’m not willing to have taxpayer money chase after bad money.”

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, that was Barack H. Obama on Thursday, March 26th, 2009.

Drum roll please…
Pakistan to get billions from U.S. despite oversight concerns 

“…I’m not willing to have taxpayer money chase after bad money.”

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, that was Barack H. Obama on Thursday, March 26th, 2009.

We’ll see about that, won’t we. Stay tuned.

Eric “Big E” Pusey over at The Minnesota Short Bus Collection Of “Progressive” Whackdoodles So Big It Must Be A Stimulus-Funded Project hops up and down and notes the blazingly obvious; Tim Pawlenty has turned on his previous – as in, over 12-year-old – support of term limits:

Dusty Trice brought it up and I couldn’t help taking a look for myself.  And wouldn’t you be surprised what I found.  Gov. Tim Pawlenty was for term limits before he was against them.

But he wasn’t just for term limits, he actually went so far as to introduce a bill.  This means he really meant it.  Back when he was a turd-flinging back-bencher.

This was a year before he became a serious politician.  A year before he was elected Minority Leader in the House.  A year before he understood how much he liked power.

One wonders where Pusey got this narrative; Pawlenty has always “liked power” (i.e. been highly motivated in his political career, often seen as a good thing when it’s not Republicans).

No person may file to be a candidate for election to a term in the house of representatives or senate that, if served, would cause the person to serve more than ten consecutive years in the legislature.
(From HF30 as introduced Jan. 10, 1997)

That’s all well and good, Timmeh, but your bill also included term limits for Governor as well.  Where do you stand on term limits now?

[What’s that buzzing sound?  Do you hear a buzzing sound?]

Oh, relax.  When a Tic – like, say, Paul Wellstone – does it, it’s called “growing in office”.

Actually, in this case the Wellstone and Pawlenty stories are closer than you might think (especially if you’re completely ignorant of both); Wellstone, if we take him at his word, opted to break his two-term promise because he worried the seat could go to a Republican if he left; the GOP controlled the Senate by a decent margin at the time, and he felt, not-completely-unjustifiably, like he needed to keep the seat in his own caucus.

Governor Pawlenty – who, unlike Wellstone, is an effective politician – can genuinely say the same thing; ceding the state’s last executive office to DFL hegemony, in the absence of an effective state GOP capable of contesting control of the State House, would be a disaster of biblical proportions for Minnesota.

So, y’see, Libs? We Republicans have actual, not-always-base motivations for the things we do, too!
But…but…that buzzing sound?

We all know you like the sound of Three Term Timmeh

Timmeh?  The handicapped kid from South Park?

We have to share a state with these toddlers?

As in a party and a cabinet that is corrupt, through and through. Senator Dodd’s wife: ties to AIG. Barney Frank’s lover: ties to Fannie Mae.

Now this:

One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel—now chief of staff to President Barack Obama—who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.

As gatekeeper to Obama, Emanuel now plays a critical role in addressing the nation’s mortgage woes and fulfilling the administration’s pledge to impose responsibility on the financial world.

Emanuel’s Freddie Mac involvement has been a prominent point on his political résumé, and his healthy payday from the firm has been no secret either. What is less known, however, is how little he apparently did for his money and how he benefited from the kind of cozy ties between Washington and Wall Street that have fueled the nation’s current economic mess.

Where’s the Change^®, Jimmy II? Where’s the Change^®?

In the previous two postings, I wrote about the dangers of facile populism and the “Evita” phenomenon (people valuing charisma over results).

Last week, of course, the most immediate and least-rhetorical danger of Obama’s policies – scapegoating, simplistic appeals to mob passion via a one-party Congress – will have to our society; immense economic dislocation:

The dangerous consequences of slapping punitive taxes on Wall Street bonuses are becoming clearer in the ashes of Washington’s AIG bonfire.President Obama and cooler Senate heads must apply reason amid hysteria to avoid damaging the economies of New York and America.

The tax plan approved by the House as revenge against a handful of obscenely greedy AIG executives would slam tens of thousands in the financial industry, many of them New Yorkers, who have nothing to do with AIG or any other wrongdoing.

And that would be just start of the collateral damage.

The levies are so draconian that major banks that took bailout money are threatening to give it back – defeating the purpose of jump-starting the economy with an influx of cash.

Businesses with so-called TARP money in their accounts would also be put at a great competitive disadvantage to firms that have none. Those include foreign banks that will poach top Americans with higher pay.

One the great dangers of the current wave of populist scapegoating is the idea that CEOs don’t deserve all the money that many of them get; many float the fiction that Japanese CEOs get a vastly smaller multiple of workers’ salaries than they do in the US (it’s partly true, partly derived due to different means of measuring compensation,and partly due to the sampling on boths sides of the Pacific).  Many CEOs fail, of course – the chief executives of AIG, Fred, Fannie, Bear Stearns, Citibank and many others might deserve some scrutiny.  But the idea that the Chief Executive Officer of a publicly-held corporation is a simple job requiring no more talent than any other employee has is lunacy; running a company in a competitive market is like Alec Baldwin’s scene in Glengarry Glen Ross; “‘re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? [Holds up prize] Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.”  And not just you, but dozens, hundreds, thousands of others.

I used to think people couldn’t appreciate good CEOs until they saw a bad CEO.  Now, I’m starting to think most of the opinionmakers (to say nothing of the mob) are either so insulated from the world of business, or just ignorant of it, that they are impossible to teach.

As the financial capital of the world, New York would take the hardest hit. The city and state stand to lose millions in needed tax revenues.

The bill passed by the House of Representatives would essentially confiscate bonuses paid out by firms that have accepted $5 billion or more in bailout funds – a category that includes major employers such as Citigroup, JPMorganChase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Let’s not forget – bonuses aren’t just for execs: lots of people get ’em.  They’re one of the key motivators for many people far from Mahogany Row.  The phrase “…we’ve paid 15% bonuses the last four years” has turned many a job interview into a hot pursuit:

Last year in New York, 168,000 workers collected bonuses – ranging from top execs to receptionists. Many would see their incomes evaporate, barring a wholesale change in the way banks pay their people.

Also caught in the whirlwind is General Motors. Does it makes sense, as blogger Nate Silver asked, to take the bonus of an engineer who dreams up an energy-saving car? No. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch bonuses are exempt because they were paid before Jan. 1.

No matter.  The mob must be appeased.  The mob, in this case, is the “best and brightest” that we send to DC:

It’s insane that New York officials, including Rep. Charles Rangel and Sen. Chuck Schumer, have joined the mob. A better example was set by Staten Island Rep. Michael McMahon, one of only six Democrats who had the courage to vote no in the House.

Populist outrage is the opposite of the “nuance”.

So what major industry are you willing to do without to satiate the mob?

Was I the only one who saw Sen. Gregg’s denunciation of Obama’s budget – it’ll bankrupt the United States…:

The top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee says the Obama administration is on the right course to save the nation’s financial system.But Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire also says President Barack Obama’s massive budget proposal will bankrupt the country.

Gregg says he has no regrets in withdrawing his nomination to become commerce secretary. He pulled out after deciding he could not fully back the administration’s economic policies.

…and thought about Evita?

The Perons – Juan and Evita – were Argentinian Socialists who, between ’em, spent years as (depending on who you ask) charismatic saviors of Argentinian society or tin-pot strongmen/women who sold Fabian Socialism using callow but easy-to-digest populism, who repeatedly bankrupted a nation that, by all rights, should be the wealthiest and most prosperous in all of Latin America, getting elected repeatedly through a combination of anger at sitting administrations and what we call “star power” today.

Just you watch; Andrew Lloyd Weber (or someone very like him) is going to write a musical about The Obamas.  I say it as a joke now – but it’s one of those jokes that seems to come true for me lately.

Americans are pissed – and rightfully so – that taxpayers got shafted in the AIG debacle, 90% tax rates and givesies backsies notwithstanding. Wait’ll ya see what happens when there’s a burglar outside or a fire burning inside their home…

…and no one shows up.

…we are just starting to see the unraveling of public pension systems that could well shake some of society’s basic foundations. Policemen, policewomen, firefighters, teachers and other public employees form the backbone of society. Many of these people happily take jobs offering lower wages in return for the psychic income of public service and, of equal importance, the financial income of a generous pension when they retire.

…expect a wave of [municipal] bankruptcies over the next decade as municipal pension plans get washed away by a tsunami of demographics and breakthroughs in longevity. In New York City, the average policeman retires at full pension at 48 years old and can expect to be paid over $2.1 million during the remainder of his life. In Houston, city workers can retire at full pension at 45 years old.

A generation of politicians agreed to absurd promises to public workers because they knew it would be some other politician’s problem.

And to whose feet shall we lay the blame for this?

Conservatives?

Not so much. Try again.