Pelosi Loves “Immoral” Cash

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attacked the health insurance industry Thursday for unethical behavior and efforts to stop the government-run health care bill.

“It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” Pelosi said to reporters, referring to insurance companies. “Of course they’ve been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure,” she said, adding, “They are the villains. They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening.”

Fortunately for Pelosi, she’s a Democrat and being a Democrat means she will never be called a hypocrite.

Pelosi, of course, has accepted campaign contributions from said villains this year and in the past, as have most of her Democratic colleagues. Pelosi’s campaign committee, for example, took $2,500 from AFLAC’s political action committee on April 13. But she’s not giving the money back just because she thinks the sources are immoral and villainous.

“As the Speaker’s opposition to the health insurance companies being in charge of American’s health care shows, there is no link between political contributions and positions on policy,” said her spokesman Brendan Daly.

Does this mean that Pelosi would accept campaign contributions from neo-Nazis and the like?  Even Barack Obama has made an effort to return tainted campaign contributions. Surely, if insurance companies were so evil, Democrats would refuse their money. Alas…

Pelosi ranked 55th among members of the 111th Congress in contributions from health insurers since the 1989-1990 election cycle, according to CRP, having taken in $186,750 (less than $20,000 per two-year cycle).

The real trick — as Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., has shown — is to turn your entire enemies list into your fundraising pool.

Douchebag Report is somewhat confused as to why Democrats expect campaign contributions from companies, regardless of whether they are working for those companies’ interests or not. This is odd for a party which just passed a bill regulating executive compensation because they don’t like business executives getting bonuses, regardless of job performance.

Gates-Gate: Why Obama Always Gets Race Wrong

Far from being “post-racial”, President Barack Obama has had a mixed history when it comes to race.  This is often because his initial perceptions are wrong, so he has to reverse himself.  Far from nuance, Obama brings a clumsiness(to put it charitably) to the topic of race which would be unthinkable for any white politician save his Vice President, Joe Biden.

When Obama first faced the topic of race on the national stage, he faced the revelation that his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a racist loon.  Being Barack Obama, his instinctive response was to face the problem with a speech.

Greatly anticipated, Obama gave a speech so electric, Chris Matthews said it caused a “thrill going up his leg“.  Obama clarified his relationship with Rev. Wright.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

So, just so everyone is on the same page, Obama says that:

A) Obama won’t disown his racist pastor.

B) Obama holds his racist pastor as closely as he does his white, racist grandmother.

Two days later, Obama gave a radio interview to Philadephia’s 610 WIP, where he further clarified his perception of his racist, white grandmother (and other “typical white” people).

“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know – there’s a reaction in her that’s been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society.”

So given a couple days to think about it, Obama thinks:

C) Typical white people are just instinctively racist.

A little over one month later, Obama announced that he was leaving Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, effectively disowning the Reverend Wright (which raises the question of how closely he held his now late grandmother…and the black community).

So after all that, the answer was actually:

D) None of the above. Drop the antisemetic, racist nutjob like I should have done 20 years back when I first met the guy…

Could we write a news story on race without mentioning a charlatan or two?  Of course not, so the next chapter in this story includes Jesse Jackson.

“See, Barack [has] been talking down to black people . . . I wanna cut his nuts out,” Jackson said.

What Jackson was referring to specifically we have no idea, but maybe he realized how quickly Obama would use and discard the black community, given how easily he threw his grandmother under the bus and disowned Rev. Wright.

Obama surrounds himself with people whose viewpoint on race was framed in the 1950s and 1960s and it’s apparent that he shares such a perspective.  When speaking of race, as he did at his inauguration, his primary message is always how bad it was back then, followed by what I’ll paraphrase as “but it’s a little better now.  We have lots of work to do.”

“This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed—why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”

Even when he made his “typical, white person” remark, his follow up was intended to lessen the blow.

“We have to break through it. What makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling less like that. And that’s pretty powerful stuff.”

The problem with this circle that Obama has grown up with that apparently they’re all still living in the 1960s.  Obama appears to try to bridge the beliefs of ’60s radicals to the 21st century real world.  He fails to embrace the concept of the post-racial America that his election is supposed to signify because his beliefs, at their roots, are still tied to the time when he was born.

One only has to examine the end of the Rev. Joseph Lowery’s Benediction at the inauguration to see a prime specimen of an individual who’s still fighting “The Man”.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around … when yellow will be mellow … when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.

Analysis

Obama seems incapable of reconciling the beliefs in unending racism that he has been surrounded with since embracing radicalism in college with the success of his own political career.

When placed on the spot, as he was Wednesday night, his gut instinct is to blame racism. When this makes the situation worse, he’ll stick to his guns…and then reverse himself.

At Wednesday night’s press conference, Lynn Sweet asked Obama a question about the Gates arrest.

Recently, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge. What does that incident say to you? And what does it say about race relations in America?

Obama premised his answer by stating that he didn’t know all the facts, so he was giving an answer based more on his own biases than what he knew about the actual incident.

“I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that [Gates case]. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”

Friday morning, the Obama administration was standing by his words, with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs saying that the criticism of the President’s remarks were politically motivated.

“I think the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed McCain,” Gibbs fired back at reporters, referring to Obama’s Republican opponent in the 2008 election. “If I’m not mistaken.”

In a move that demonstrates that while Obama will wait until he’s had two strikes before making the right move, Obama finally conceded to Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley and the Cambridge police union late Friday.

Taking the briefing-room podium just hours after Cambridge police union officials called on Obama to apologize for saying the officers involved in the incident with Gates behaved “stupidly,” Obama conceded that he erred in his “choice of words.”

Obama said he spoke to James Crowley, the sergeant who arrested Gates, “and I have to tell you that, as I said yesterday, my impression of him is that he was an outstanding police officer…and that was confirmed in the phone conversation.”

“In my choice of words, I unfortunately gave the impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically,” Obama said, walking back his sharpest criticism.

But, the president said: “I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Prof. Gates out of his home and to the station. I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Prof. Gates probably overreacted as well.”

While it takes a lot to overcome decades of ingrained bias, most of America has done it, so hopefully Obama can too.

When You’re A Hammer, Everything Looks Like A Nail

Back in April, Senator Harry Reid revealed that freshman US Senator Barack Obama had told him, “I have a gift”.  Debate has raged since then whether he was talking about his teleprompter or his actual speaking ability, with Vice President Joe Biden a pillar of the teleprompter camp. Regardless of how terribly Obama speaks without a teleprompter, when working in unison, the two create such bliss that people lose consciousness. Whatever the issue, Obama can give a speech on it.

Fortunately for the President, he is not the only one to recognize his rhetorical present. Obamaspeech.com has been created to help the world recognize the man’s ability to say so little with so much so well.

“The Speech” has become one of Obama’s primary tools.  Whatever the issue, the Administration will create a speech to deal with it.  These speeches usually involve Obama skillfully throwing family members or the United States under the bus while beating an army of evil straw men, known as the “Those”, to death.

Whenever his Presidential campaign or Administration has faced a challenge, the writers are fired up, the teleprompters have been deployed and a rhetorical offensive is launched.

Unfortunately, what Obama doesn’t seem to comprehend is that speeches are merely marketing for solutions, not actual solutions, and marketing will only take you so far when you’re selling a flawed product.  Placing too much reliance on only one means of communication will rapidly create what advertisers call “saturation“.

Obama’s attempts to use soaring rhetoric in parts of the world where people are more interested in the substance of what he says rather than the soaring way he delivers it have left many wondering “Where’s the beef?” As the great expectations created for the American people before last year’s election fail to be realized, it’s likely that many more will find themselves asking the same thing.

Media Exonerates Rapist, Pedophile

 

Rant:  ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC — You’re missing a huge story here… There’s a (*sssshhhh* homosexual Democrat) named Frank Lombard, the Associate Director for Duke University’s Center for Health Policy…

 

ABC isn’t reporting that he’s gay. NBC isn’t reporting that he logged into a chat room as “perv dad for fun.” CBS isn’t acknowledging that he traded his 5-year-old son for sex. CNN and MSNBC remains silent in this minority child for sex scandal…

Perhaps this crime doesn’t fit an MSM agenda: (click here to see only ONE Lombard reference) when “duke” and “rapist” are put together. 

Alas, let’s thank American Thinker for telling us what we need to know:

Frank Lombard is the associate director of Duke’s Center for Health Policy. The university administrator was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with offering up his adopted 5-year-old son for sex. I tried to contact Frank Lombard over the weekend to probe his expertise regarding the health benefits of raping small children. So far, he’s declined to comment.

University administrator Lombard is accused of logging on to a chat room online and describing himself as a “perv dad for fun.” The detective who wisely looked into the suspicious screen name says that Lombard admitted to molesting his own adopted son. All this was before allegedly inviting a stranger to travel to North Carolina from another state to statutorily rape his already-molested adopted son.

It gets worse. The allegations are stunning and sickening. Adams spares us what he says is the worst.
However, identity politics are probably also involved in understanding the media response. Again, Adams:

The Associate Press (AP) did not mention the fact that the five-year old offered up for molestation was black. Bringing that fact to light might be damaging to the political coalition that exists between blacks and gays. Nor did the AP mention that the adopted child is being raised by a homosexual couple. Bringing that fact to light might harm the gay adoption movement.

Pork Passes

Well folks, the largest spending bill in history has passed the House. Here are the Final Vote Results for Roll Call 70.

The final language was posted last night, and links to the various docs may be found at Speaker Pelosi’s website. The four major files are more than 100MB in size. You may find it interesting that they chose not to create a searchable PDF, making it impossible to read. Here’s to a computer-savvy congress and an Obama administration dedicated to “transparency.” Rather, you get a scan of a printed version, containing rather telling markups: 

 

hr1_legtext_cr.pdf – Created 2/12/2009 11:44:51 PM Modified 2/13/2009 12:40:12 AM
hr1_legtext_crb.pdf – Created 2/12/2009 11:55:17 PM Modified 2/13/2009 1:19:36 AM

hr1_cr_jse.pdf – Created 2/12/2009 10:22:08 PM Modified 2/13/2009 1:02:34 AM
hr1_cr_jseb.pdf – Created 2/12/2009 10:22:44 PM Modified 2/13/2009 1:26:21 AM

Looks like it really was a late night for Congress.

Blagojevich Blames Chicago Corruption For Chicago Corruption

In an interesting, but not-at-all unexpected maneuver, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has chosen to blame his misfortune on his former political allies and colleagues. During a morning interview on Chicago’s The Don and Roma Morning Show, Blago announces:

[H]e wants to point out ‘the phoniness and hypocrisy’ of the politicians who run state government.

“A bunch of them are cheating on their spouses, a lot of them drink in excess, very few of them know what’s going on, they just take their marching orders from legislative leaders.”

Phoniness? Hypocrisy? Hi pot, meet kettle. Blagojevich continues, “I’ve got my crayons ready, I’m ready to write it. I’d like to tell those stories.” Could this be? We may have an unabridged encyclopedia of Chicago politics in our midst. Maybe we can envision a pleasing foreword written by George Ryan.

I look forwards to the likely hilarity that will ensue in the coming months. In one sense, I’d like to see such a book serve as a wake up call to all of the Chicago voters that continue to elect these corrupt, hypocritical idiots who overshadow the politics of an otherwise conservative state. 

From a practical standpoint, however, I expect to see nothing more than what we already know: Chicago politics is corrupt because it always has been. Each politician who claims to break the cycle of corruption and straighten up Chicago ends up being worse than the thieves who preceded them. This occurs over and over again in one huge comical cycle.

So Blagojevich, blame on! Let’s see what you got!

Blagojevich Sends Largest Available Ego To US Senate

Rod Blagojevich looked high and low for Illinois’s largest available ego and sent it to the US Capitol to serve in the Senate this morning.

As of this morning, Harry Reid did not let Roland Burris be seated on the grounds that his appointment has not received the administrative signature of Illinois’s Secretary of State.  But if and when Burris is seated, the members of what is arguably the world’s most egotistical legislative body will be taken aback by the sheer size of Burris’s ego.

The 71-year-old Burris — who often refers to himself in the third person — has never been shy about broadcasting his ambitions and loudly celebrating his achievements.

“I am a visionary,” he declared in a 2002 interview with the Sun-Times when he was running for governor, his third unsuccessful try at the job.

In a 1994 interview with the paper, during his first effort at capturing the governor’s office, Burris said his past success — he had been elected comptroller and attorney general ‹ was “divine providence” that began at age 15 when he decided to become a lawyer and officeholder.

If assuming that his political career was divinely inspired wasn’t enough of an indicator, meet Roland’s two children, son Roland and daughter Rolanda.  Yep, he named both of his children after himself, which rivals, if not trumps, Jermaine Jackson naming his son Jermajesty in sheer brazenness.

And let’s look at the tomb he has had built for himself(engraved with his life’s achievements):

We’re sure that the engravers are hard at work today, adding “US Senator 2009-” to the stonework as this goes to press.

Of course, Burris was only the third largest ego of Illinois, but the governor is otherwise occupied and Obama has just left town.

Joe The Plumber’s “Big Brother” Resigns

Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Director Helen Jones-Kelley resigned Wednesday after a finding that she improperly used state computers to dig up personal information on Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher after he asked Barack Obama about his tax plan.

Department of Job and Family Services Director Helen Jones-Kelley said in a statement accompanying her resignation that she won’t allow her reputation to be disparaged and that she is concerned for her family’s safety.

“This decision comes after a time of pause, in which I realize that I continue to be used as a political postscript, providing a distraction from urgent state priorities,” she said in her statement.

She could not be reached for additional comment Wednesday night.

Gov. Ted Strickland suspended Jones-Kelley for a month without pay after the Ohio Inspector General’s office found in November that she improperly used state computers to find personal information on Samuel Wurzelbacher. The investigation also found that she conducted improper political fundraising activity for now President-elect Barack Obama.

“The governor values Helen Jones-Kelley’s years of public service as a dedicated advocate for the most vulnerable among us,” Strickland’s spokesman Keith Dailey said Wednesday. “He understands her decision and accepts her resignation.”

So Jones-Kelley violates Joe the Plumber’s civil rights, abuses her government powers and she claims she’s the one worried about having her reputation disparaged and her family’s safety?  That’s pretty ripe.

Jones-Kelley wasn’t the only state employee caught snooping through Wurzelbacher’s past.

Two other officials who were suspended from their positions for their role in the computer search will not be returning to their jobs, an agency spokeswoman said…

Two top-level members of Jones-Kelley’s staff also will be leaving the department, said agency spokeswoman Scarlett Bouder.

Fred Williams, the department’s assistant director, will resign effective Jan. 31 and the agency is revoking Doug Thompson’s position as deputy director of child support effective Dec. 22, she said.

Both had been suspended from their positions after being implicated in the computer records search.

So the good news, at the end of the day, is that there are three fewer douchebags working in the Ohio government…and there has been a “chilling” effect on others who would abuse their government powers to attack their political opponents.

The Cleanest Thing To Come Out Of Patti Blagojevich’s Mouth Was Rod

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was not the only foul-mouthed Blagojevich in the recent corruption scandal.

According to the complaint, it was Patti Blagojevich’s voice in the background spewing a suggestion to “just fire” some newspaper editors if the Tribune Co. hoped for state assistance to sell Wrigley Field, the storied home of the Chicago Cubs.

“Hold up that (expletive) Cubs (expletive),” she says as her husband is talking on the telephone. “(Expletive) them.”

Patti Blagojevich’s family acknowledged the salty language contained on the recordings but said those words were uttered at a stressful time as both she and her husband were under federal scrutiny.

“I can understand it. This a pressure cooker she’s living in,” said Deborah Mell, who will be sworn in as a state representative next month.

Pressure cooker?  Is that what it’s called when you’re the most powerful couple in Illinois?  What’s the pressure, that someone, somewhere might be ripping off the Illinois taxpayer more than you and your husband?

Patti Blagojevich, 43, has not been charged with wrongdoing, and she has not spoken publicly since her husband’s arrest.

Chicago Alderman Dick Mell said his oldest daughter is “loyal sometimes to a fault” and would “jump down (his) throat” when he argued with Rod Blagojevich at holiday gatherings.

So, are we to believe that her own father thinks that she’s…a douchebag?

He has had his suspicions about his son-in-law for some time.

Dick Mell helped his son-in-law in his first run for governor, but a year after his election in 2002, the alderman publicly questioned if Blagojevich fundraisers were trading political contributions for state jobs.

“At that time, I felt that I was right to say what I said. I don’t know, that’s ancient history,” Mell said.

A breach formed between father and daughter and Mell said a conversation he had with Patti Blagojevich Wednesday was the first time they had spoken in “quite a while.”

So the corruption of the Blagojevich’s was too much for the rest of her political family?  That’s impressive.

Santa Claus: Environmentalist Douchebag

An army of Santa Clauses descended on energy company E-on’s headquarters in Coventry, England to protest a new coal-fired power plant. Apparently Santa Claus will have a hard time affording the coal he needs to give naughty children with the increased demand for the fossil fuel the plant will create.

E-on is planning to build a new coal-powered power station in Kingsnorth, near Rochester in Kent, and the protestors believe this will cause too much damage to the environment.

Paul Cooper-Clarke, group spokesman, said: “We are in a climate crisis and building a coal-powered station is the last thing we need to be doing. We’ve got nothing against Coventry but this is the beginning of an ongoing campaign against the E-on company.”

About 20 people from Climate Camp, which has previously targeted Heathrow Airport and other power stations, took part in yesterday’s protest.

Mr Cooper-Clarke said eight people managed to enter the building while four had stuck their hands to the glass doors with strong glue.

Laura Wilkes, who took part in the protest, said E-on’s plans make the company a “climate criminal”. She said: “They want to build new coal-fired power stations, which is the most polluting way of producing electricity known to man.

The most polluting way of producing electricity known to man?  Douchebag Report doubts that.  What about burning baby seals and hippie carcasses to boil bleach to spin a turbine?

Climate Camp sounds like the typical bunch of ill-informed holier-than-though douchebags we’ve  come to expect from the environmental Left.

« Previous Page — Next Page »