Just watched Roland Burris get sworn in to the Senate by the VP, and I think I found the mysterious taint everyone was talking about. I am not sure it is fair to say Burris is tainted by Dick Cheney’s sins, though.
Dispatches From the Failed Obama Administration
I really need to stop watching cable news, but I had the idiot box on CNN last night and got to watch this spectacle:
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No.
But the reason, as you just heard Dana report, that Harry Reid, the Senate leader, wanted to schedule it sooner, rather than later, is, they believe, the longer it waits, as David just said, the more water the ship could take on when it comes to the TARP funding.
And — and David makes a key point, Anderson, because, politically, every day we get closer to that inauguration, and then, on Tuesday, this becomes Barack Obama’s economy. It’s Barack Obama’s bailout money. And it’s Barack Obama who is paying the price for the anxiety. He has a lot of goodwill. He has high public approval.
Even many people who didn’t vote for him want him to succeed. But guess what? They’re still mad about the economy, still don’t think this bailout is a good idea, don’t know where the money is going, and don’t think it’s getting to them on Main Street USA or to the bank on the corner of their street.
And that is now becoming increasingly — and is about to become completely — Barack Obama’s political problem, not John McCain’s, not George W. Bush’s, not the Republican Party’s.
Got it? Obama OWNS the economy the day he becomes President. His fault. That growth during the Clinton years- that was due to Reagan. The bad stuff from 2000 on, that was the Clinton economy, until, of course, the 20th, when it becomes Obama’s.
John King starts a new Sunday show on CNN from 9 am to 1pm. I have been given (not really) an advance copy of the topics:
“Will America survive the Obama economy?”
“Economic malpractice: Is impeachment of Obama off the table?”
“How Obama wrecked the economy before ever enacting one policy.”
Wankers.
Dispatches From the Failed Obama AdministrationPost + Comments (39)
These Are Fair Questions
DougJ’s BFF Roger Simon has a catty piece up at the Politico titled “What if I didn’t pay taxes?”:
Would it be OK if I stopped paying my taxes until Barack Obama names me to be his secretary of the treasury?
That is a deal I would like to get. That is the deal financial wizard Timothy Geithner got.
He didn’t pay all of his federal taxes for years. Then, after Obama decided to name him treasury secretary, Obama’s vetting team discovered Geithner’s little oversight.
Not paying your taxes is considered serious for some people. But not for Geithner, a Wall Street “wonder boy” — he is 47 — who is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and was instrumental in putting together the recent Wall Street bailout package.
You would think a guy like this would know about paying taxes, but no. Mistakes were made.
Geithner failed to pay the proper self-employment taxes for 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, even though he was sent documents telling him he had to do so.
But in 2006, Geithner got a document he couldn’t ignore. The IRS sent Geithner a notice saying he had not paid his taxes for 2003 and 2004, and Geithner paid up.
But he did not pay up for 2001 and 2002, even though he must have known that he skipped taxes for those years, too.
Catty, yes. Framed in the worst light possible, yes? But they seem like they are fair questions. What would happen to someone if they made the same mistake as Geithner? Since everyone on my tv has told me this is a common mistake (and I believe the “documents” Geithner got were really just standard statements that everyone gets, and if anything this makes the case for simplification of the tax code), it sure would be nice if there were some reporters out there would try to find out if what happened to Geithner is different from anyone else for this sort of mistake. Certainly this has happened to someone else. Did Geithner get special treatment? I’d like to know, because if he did, then there really is something wrong with his pick.
Too bad Roger Simon is more interested in being a hack than being a reporter, because those questions seem to me to be relevant and worth asking. I guess we will just have to hope an actual journalist looks into it before we make our judgment.
*** Update ***
I guess many of you are missing the sarcasm. I just assumed that everyone knew that this was no big deal, and was pointing out that by omitting this, Simon was actually presenting a pretty hacktacular column. Hell, he could read his own damned website.
Question
I wonder when will wingnuts will figure out the thematic parallels between Daniel Craig’s new film Defiance and the Greatest Moving Picture Ever Recorded By Man (TM), Red Dawn. When they inevitably do, who will be the first wingnut blogger to paint himself as a Jewish partisan fighting the Nazis? Whoever guesses Ace of Spades, if correct, only gets half credit.
Taking One For the Team
I support this:
Steelers Nation is gripped by playoff fever and it seems the man in charge of Pittsburgh has been severely afflicted.
Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has asked to be known as Luke Steelerstahl — at least for this week.
“On behalf of the Steelers Nation, I’ve decided to remove the word ‘Ravens’ from my name just like the Steelers will remove them from the AFC Championship,” he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in regards to the upcoming playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens.
Ravenstahl began the process of a legal name change, but his paperwork has not gone through because it wasn’t complete. The civil court in Pittsburgh also said it didn’t receive the required $108 check to process the request, the Post-Gazette said.
Stupid, a waste of time, but funny.
They Bring The Funny
And now some sheer stupidity from the Confluence:
And what if Barack Obama DOESN’T remind me of Richard Nixon? Then what, you rogues?
And what would happen if we would cross breed the PUMA’s with Mike Pence’s Tiger Team– would we get some super-hybrid of stupid?
Strike Forces and Tiger Teams
It seems that GOP Conference chairman, Mike Pence, is taking a cue from the smart folks at Red State (link fixed):
Typically, the conference e-mails various journos and TV types a “What’s Hot on the Hill” guide to point out who should be booked on which shows and who is knowledgeable on various subjects. In short: a rapid response team. A great concept.
And it never had a name — till now.
“Tiger Teams” is what Pence is calling the aforementioned groups of members who can be used on certain issues. Like yesterday, on SCHIP, for example — they can send out all knowledgeable health care members. But naming it “Tiger Team”? What is this, summer camp? There was even a video in the conference meeting Wednesday to announce its official launch.
I’m suffering from wingnut stupidity overload right now, so I can’t fully process this.
I will point out, though, that if you scroll down the post about “Tiger Teams”, you will learn that Ricky Schroeder is a Republican. But what do expect from a Silver Spoon?
Update: Per some of the comments (here; here), the name “Tiger Team” already has a meaning and even has its own wiki page:
A tiger team is a specialized group tasked with testing the effectiveness of an organization’s ability to protect assets by attempting to circumvent, defeat, or otherwise thwart that organization’s internal and external security.