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^®?

This one blows my mind; all you Jamestown natives who read the blog will get it.

On Tuesday, the city’s airport was closed due to flooding:

The airport is on the high ground.  The airport remains closed to fixed-wing planes today.

This, just in time for the blizzard, as the flooding in the lowlands of the James Valley (which I wrote about yesterday) kicks off.

And it is kicking off in earnest; apparently the “worst case” forecasts show both the Jametown and Pipestem dams rising to within a foot of their emergency spillways, even as the Army Corps of Engineers increases outflows from the dams to compensate for the recent rain and massive melt-off.  Over that level, and the dams’ll release directly into the rivers without any regulation, pushing the normally-sluggish (and already-swollen) James way over its normally-ample banks.  The Corps of Engineers is working on building temporary dikes, and  sandbagging is reportedly underway.

(Via It’s Good To Be In N.D. the only Jamestown-centered blog I can find)

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.

Any dictator can get some soldiers and shoot their predecessor and get into power, and then spend his term waiting for the next goon with soldiers to repeat the process.

For a dictator to get elected, they need large mobs of uninformed but inchoately angry people to put them into office.

But the mobs are like the soldiers in the first example; the dictator has to keep looking over his shoulder in case the mob turns on him.

So the dictator keeps the mob occupied.  Hitler pointed them at the Jews; Kristallnacht sent mobs of young Nazis into the streets to harass Jews, destroy their businesses, and make their lives miserable.  91 died.  Stalin kept the mob busy denouncing each other.  Hugo Chavez and  Ayatollah Khomeini and Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein all found boogeymen, internal and external, to keep the mob from turning their wrath on them.

Now, Barack Obama is not a dictator.  He’s a democratically elected president. In 2012, when he loses in an electoral landslide (provided the GOP can get its act together) he’ll hand power over.

But Obama – the least-vetted, most inexperienced president in American history – was elected by a huge popular groundswell, animated by fatigue with the sitting administration and actively disinformed by a media whose legs tingled at the thought of The One taking office.

That “groundswell” has to be kept occupied during the dismal business of actually trying to run a government.

Last weekend on Marty Owings’ Radio Free Nation I noted that the “protests” we see carrying people to the homes of AIG executives to “protest” the giving of perfectly-legal but shamefully tone-deaf bonuses had echoes of the sort of populist mob action that led us to Kristallnacht.  The show’s liberal commentator threw a fit, of course; since 91 executives haven’t died, there are no parallels whatsoever (only liberalsl get nuance.  Did you know that?)

But even Kristallnacht didn’t spring fully-formed from nowhere.  It was part of an endless wave of legalized violence against those the regime needs to demonize to keep the mob occupied (and we all know where that wave ended, don’t we?)

Waves of eliminationist violence – the Holocaust, Rwanda, Darfur, the Holodomor – all start small.  And they all start somewhere.

At any rate,  today “the rich” – bankers, insurance executives – are the scapegoat.  And it’s starting:

…in Scotland, an “anti-capitalist” group attacked the home of Sir Fred Goodwin, former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland, smashing several windows and vandalizing a car parked in the driveway. Goodwin had been demonized in the press and attacked by British politicians, much like AIG’s management.

The reactions of bystanders are rather appalling. A neighbor “said she was surprised that [Goodwin’s home] had not been attacked before.” Others seemed understanding of, if not sympathetic with, the vandals.

No, Obama’s not chartering this sort of violent lunacy. But he, and his compliant media, are setting up “the rich” – today it’s AIG execs – as scapegoats for an economic downturn that has plenty of parents.  Mobs love scapegoats.  Scapegoats are bright, shiny things to keep mobs occupied so they don’t get cranky and turn on their leaders out of boredom.

In the meantime, look for the media and their less-bright cousins to focus obsessively on “right-wing violence”, no matter how hard they have to imagine it.

Books about the ways, virtues and style of French women – French Women Don’t Get Fat, French Women Don’t Sleep Alone and so on are more or less the vogue (hah!) these days.

MOB blogger Space Beagel:is taking aim at the trend:

So that got me wondering about books regarding French Women. A search on Amazon.com produces 154 results but perhaps the inevitable next book was missing which I call:

“French Women Don’t Age or Die”

Such a title would help bring this genre to a close I believe!!

Aim true, buddy.  Aim true.

A few weeks ago, I noted the 43rd anniversary of the greatest blizzard of my lifetime, the Great North Dakota Blizzard of ’66. 

Of course, all that snow had to go somewhere.

The Army Corps of Engineers had put up a dam on the James River – the longest un-navigable river in the world – in the fifties, which put a stop to the frequent floods that had plagued the city when that shallow, muddy river had gotten even the faintest surge of water.  But Pipestem Creek – which joins the James in Klaus Park, on the west side of Jamestown, under the Fort Seward bluffs, a place that was the city’s original reason to exist since its days as an Arikara camp since time immemorial – had no dam at the time.  And so the spring runoff pushed the Pipestem – and the James, south of the confluence – over their banks.

I was three at the time.  Dad spent a couple of nights sandbagging.  I remember worried conversations about the sandbag line protecting downtown (also our neighborhood, although our house was on higher ground) being more fragile than people would have liked.

And best of all?  I remember the National Guard putting its command post or supply dump or something across the street from our house, in the yard in front of Trinity Hospital.  Skids of sandbags, trucks full of sand, front-end loaders and, best of all, an amphibious DUKW “Duck” truck congregated there, with streams of guys coming and going at all hours. 

A few years later, the Corps finished a dam over the Pipestem.  And that was the last flood Jamestown saw.

Until now. The immense snowfall this year – more than the usually-dry state, more famous for wind than snow, has seen in a generation – is causing flooding even in Jamestown.

Of course, as a blizzard pounds the state, the flooding is everywhere.  An ice dam on the Missouri River, at its confluence with the Heart River, is  hbacking up water into Bismarck and Mandan.  The National Guard and, believe it or not, the Coast Guard tried to blow the jam open earlier today; we’ll wait to see what happens.  In the meantime, another huge ice jam north of the city threatens to let spill another deluge into Bismarck.

Of course, Fargo is frantically sandbagging against a crest that is  supposed to be higher than 1997’s epic flood; in Grand Forks, which was largely destroyed in ’97, the crest is expected to be competitive with the epic of 12 years ago.

All the while, a blizzard is thrashing the state.

There are times I miss the place.  I wish I could be there now.

I gotta remind you; join Ed and I this Saturday on the Northern Alliance Radio Network (Volume II, “The Headliners”) as we interview Christina Hoff Summers.

We’ll be talking about her most recent work, which she’ll be in town speaking about (explaining the “lack” of women in math, science and engineering and, more importantly, assailing “feminist” explanations of the issue), as well as her earlier work including the classic The War On Boys. 

Join us on Saturday. I’m looking forward to this.

Also – on April 11, we’ll be doing a warmup interview for the Minnesota Tea Party.  Stay tuned!

This crisis will not be wasted – especially since he created it.

I can’t even pretend to be surprised by these scumbags’ designs to socialize America any more:

In comments before testimony from both Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Fed chief Ben Bernanke Tuesday, Frank said he wants to regulate pay on Wall Street — even for companies that aren’t getting bailouts.

Frank, one of the chief architects of the housing mess that’s brought us so low, isn’t satisfied merely with pretending he and his Democratic pals aren’t to blame for all this. No, exploiting voter anger over the now-infamous AIG bonuses, he also wants to dictate to American capitalism what it can earn and what it can’t.

This is the kind of thing that normally happens in Third World countries ruled by tinhorn dictators, or in fascist states, where the democratic rule of law has collapsed. Not the U.S.

Yet, that’s where we find ourselves today, isn’t it? Democrats in Congress, who steadfastly rejected virtually all efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they went on the wildest, most irresponsible lending binge in the history of finance, now pose themselves as the saviors of fallen capitalism.

The hypocrisy is nothing short of stunning.

Click through and read the whole thing. Liberals are doing everything they can to destroy our country from within.

The unintended effects of populism.

The Steele melteown.

The end of the Oboneymoon.

The flooding. Oh, my, the flooding.
And all I got today is piercing headache,hacking cough, piercing headache and general run-downitude.

I haven’t had so much as a beer in weeks, but I feel hung over.

Through the grace of G-d and Nyquil (R), I should be back in action later today.  There probably won’t be a whooole lot of blogging until tomorrow.

I’ve been trying to write a post for the past few weeks about the Dems’ new fixation with cutiepie word games – but Bobby Jindal says it all, when asked if he wants the President to fail:

Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, ‘Why no sir, I don’t want the president to fail,’ is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism,” Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. “This is political correctness run amok.”

This, of course, from the party that said “dissent is good!”, and whinged about their precious patriotism being insulted if they were questioned.

Here’s one of the GOP’s problems; the Dems are playing the battle for the language as a full-contact sport, while Republicans think it’s a sideshow.

The bad guys are winning.

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.

…is that The One is doing his homework with the guy who came in second in the Cold War:

U.S. President Barack Obama has held talks with Mikhail Gorbachev, a spokesman for the former Soviet leader said on Monday, in the latest sign of Washington’s efforts to “press the reset button” on ties with Russia.

The Good News:  There is none.

The Good-News-That’s-Really Bad News:  We have no wall to tear down.

…I gotta confess I think this isn’t all that far off.

Sorry, visionaries.  Traction is dicey.

Christopher Walken’s Twitter feed is just about the funniest thing on the web these days.

Could you imagine what’d happen if George W. Bush had not only muffed the name of the president of another nation, but of France?

Well, you’d have to imagine it; it was the Obamessiah:

Obama sent a letter to the French president, and called him Jacques Chirac.Maybe Barack Obama was too busy running for the next-higher-office (which is his his one strength) to bother reading a newspaper or a magazine or even a book to discover that they held an election a couple of years ago and elected L’Americain, Nicolas Sarkozy, as president.

But it is Obama, and not Bush, so…:

The American media has ignored this faux pas. But the French have not. One does not need to read French to understand the point of the Le Monde cartoon as shown [in Don Surber’s piece; go check it out].

Not just any nation, mind you, but a big, important one that is almost alone in Europe in upping its commitments to international security. The one that The One was supposed to help us in reaching out to.

UPDATE: Brian Jones tweets “Sarkozy oughtta respond with a letter addressed to “President Carter.”

UPDATE 2:  Of course there’s  an explanation.  And it works. 

Of course Obama will take more care with the French than with, say, all of us gun-clinging Jeebus freaks. 

Short-sell the Afghani.

President Obama the foreign policy naif is talking “Exit Strategies” again:

“There’s got to be an exit strategy,” Mr Obama said in an interview with the CBS “60 Minutes” programme on Sunday. “There’s got to be a sense that this is not a perpetual drift.”

Mr Obama’s comments come as his administration prepares to roll out its new strategy for Afghanistan amid rising insurgent violence that has called into question the viability of a seven-year-old US-led effort to create a functioning democracy.

There is no such thing as an “exit strategy”  There is only winning, or accepting defeat.

60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft responds to President Obama’s curious performance on the long-running, Democrat-leaning news show.

Quoting Kroft:

You’re sitting here. And you’re laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems,” Kroft told the president. “Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he’s sitting there just making jokes about money?’ How do you deal with — I mean: explain … Are you punch-drunk?””No, no. There’s gotta be a little gallows humor to get you through the day,” Obama replied, with a laugh.

If it’d been Bush, the question would have been more like “are drinking agan?”

Of course, the media just is not going to hold The One’s feet in the fire:

The president also acknowledged surprise at how quickly the U.S. economy crumbled between his November election and January inauguration.

“I don’t think that we anticipated how steep the decline would be,” he said in the “60 Minutes” interview on CBS television. “That slope is a lot steeper than anything that we’ve said — we’ve seen before.”

Or since January.  Y’know.

But some of us – the “economic reality-based” community – weren’t surprised at all.  Tax and spend liberals shred economies.

…associating “North Dakota” with “drought”.  That’s mostly what we had when I was a kid, or so it seemed.

It seems lit’s never quite perfect:

The National Weather Service has issue a flood warning for Stutsman County and much of the state.

The warning, which will be in effect until 9:45 a.m. Tuesday for urban areas and small streams in much of North Dakota, said that heavy runoff from snowmelt and ice jams on small streams and rivers are causing widespread flooding in western and southern North Dakota. As precipitation develops over the next day, man areas could see rapid rises in local streams and rivers. Rates of more than an inch per hour are expected from stronger thunderstorms.

Interesting to see what happens in Minnesota.

Our prayers and sympathy go to the families and comrades of the officers Pslain by a paroled con in Oakland:

Police say the fourth Oakland police officer shot on Saturday has died at a city hospital.Oakland police spokesman Jeff Thomason says 41-year-old Officer John Hege died Sunday at Highland Hospital after being gravely wounded during a traffic stop.

Authorities say a 26-year-old parolee opened fire on Hege and 40-year-old Sgt. Mark Dunakin after they pulled him over around 1 p.m. on Saturday, killing Dunakin.

Suspect Lovelle Mixon was slain later that afternoon in a gunfight with police that left two more officers dead. Thomason identified those officers as 43-year-old Sgt. Ervin Romans and 35-year-old Sgt. Daniel Sakai.

No getting around it; it’s a tragedy.

Boy; it’s a good thing California, and especially Oakland, clamp down hard on the rights of law-abiding Californians to defend themselves; goodness only knows how bad this tragedy could have been otherwise.

…telling management “Um…about those bronze windows…”

Still, if you work in technology these days, this bit is pretty familiar stuff.

I’ll be guesting on Marty Owings’ “Radio Free Nation” tonight.

The first hour will be the usual scrum.

The second hour will be about Minnesota’s proposed gay marriage amendment. I’ll be joining State Representative Phyllis Kahn (D) , Senator Warren Limmer (R), Thomas Prichard from the Minnesota Family Council and Out Front Minnesota’s Monica Meyer.

It starts at 7:30 PM right here.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 11AM-5PM:

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I are up next, from 1-3. We’ll be interviewing Ezra Levant, author of “Shakedown – How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy In The Name Of Human Rights”, which is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of democratic society.  We’ll talk about his battle with the Canadian “human rights” bureaucracy, and what it portends for ouir own future; also, Obama’s Tone Defness on so many topics.
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King will be dishing the economic smack from 3-5.
• And don’t forget, our long-time colleagues David Strom and Margaret Martin lead things off on the David Strom Show from 9-11AM!

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream)
• Podcast at Townhall (usually uploaded by Monday morning).
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!

Join us!

(Title: Mr. Bad Example)

Ed and I will be talking with Ezra Levant about his battle with the Alberta “Human Rights Commission“, and its’ portents for Western civilization.

Levant’s battle with the “Human Rights” police and the Canadian left (motto: “What the American Left wants to be! – ed.) foreshadow what faces every voice of conscience in a place run by the untrammeled left.

Tune in.  If you’re not outraged, you need to check for a pulse.  And if that outrage doesn’t lead you to action, you’ll need to check for a conscience.