Flags at half staff today...

...to honor the untimely demise of a public servant:

Breaking News, literally: After helping both candidate and chief executive deliver weighty words countless times on the campaign trail, on the road to, from and within the White House, the beloved Teleprompter of Democrat President Barack Obama died tonight.

The fragile overused speech aid was little more than two years old. No immediate cause of death and no autopsy were announced.

The passing of the celebrated speech-giving helper happened suddenly and unexpectedly. The president was looking right at the Teleprompter, giving remarks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House. He was rigorously defending his economic stimulus package, which has been rigorously criticized recently for being like many political speeches, not very stimulating.

Virtually everywhere he's gone in recent years the Teleprompter has been faithfully at Obama's side, and slightly to the front.

H/T to Allah at Hot Air for link to the "Zapruder Film"

A corporate event that makes AIG look downright frugal

Remember the hullaballoo back in December when AIG threw a swanky corporate event for $440,000 after taking Federal bailout money? Outrageous, right? The class warfare scolds were all over it:

The British newspaper the Guardian reported Tuesday that AIG subsidiary AIG American General spent about $440,000 on its big shots and their business associates in eight days at the St. Regis, beginning just five days after the company accepted an emergency loan from the U.S. government and averted bankruptcy.
That figure was among many that surfaced today at a congressional hearing over AIG. Among the other numbers cited by the Guardian of AIG spending:
-$139,375 on rooms
-$147,301 on banquets
-$23,380 on spa treatments
-$6,939 on

A disgusting show of excess, no? Adding insult to injury, of course, is the infusion of taxpayer funds that occured just before the event.

Well, you ain't seen nothing yet. Word is that another organization outspent AIG on it's "corporate" event by some $310,000 for "training" at the posh "Jewel of the Desert," the Arizona Biltmore Hotel and Spa (see picture above of follow the link for amenities). In these trying times, in this economy, what organization would dare to engage in such an orgy of excess?

Last week the Social Security Administration flew approximately 700 of its managers from across the U.S. and Guam to Phoenix, Arizona’s posh Arizona Biltmore Hotel and Resort, for “organizational training.” The event, which included musical entertainment and dancing, skits, catered food, cocktails, and a “casino night” featuring “door prizes,” cost us lowly taxpayers approximately $750,000.

Forget that the Social Security Administration, a division of the U.S. Government to which every American is required by force of law to hand-over a portion of their earnings, has been headed for insolvency for over a decade. Ignore the fact that SSA is estimated to waste hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each year in faulty “overpayments.”

....those crickets you're hearing? That's the sound of the class warfare scolds...ignoring this story.

H/T: Veronique de Rugy, The Corner

Opportunistic Publicity Whores

Levi Johnston, that bastion of responsibility and reliability, is once again capitalizing on his hanger-on notoriety. And of course, the mainstream media are all over this important story:

A spokeswoman for Gov. Sarah Palin is scoffing at comments by Bristol Palin's former fiance, who says he thinks Palin resigned to cash in on her fame.

(...)

"She had talked about how nice it would be to take some of this money people had been offering us and you know just run with it, say 'forget everything else,'" he said.

He said he thinks book deals were really what appealed to Palin.

"I think the big deal was the book. That was millions of dollars," said Johnston, who has had a strained relationship with the family but now says things have improved.

In other news, LaToya Jackson, that bastion of responsibility and reliability, is once again capitalizing on her hanger-on notoriety. And of course, the mainstream media are all over this important story, too:

Michael Jackson was killed by a band of greedy hangers-on, his sister La Toya alleges in interviews with British Sunday newspapers.

"I believe Michael was murdered, I felt that from the start,'' the 53-year-old said.

"Not just one person was involved, rather it was a conspiracy of people. He was surrounded by a bad circle. Michael was a very meek, quiet, loving person. People took advantage of that."

"Less than a month ago, I said I thought Michael was going to die before the London shows because he was surrounded by people who didn't have his best interests at heart."

La Toya said she had ordered a private autopsy.

Mainstream Media to America: Who ya gonna believe, us or your lying eyes?

Through sheer chance, I happened to catch about a half hour of the Michael Jackson Memorial Spectacle. Part pageant, part awards show, part concert, part circus, the event was, appropriately, as freakish as the man it honored.

I do not wish to belabor the point of how inappropriate the Jackson Memorial was; anyone with eyes and a brain could figure that out.

No, the amazing thing about the whole bizarre affair was watching the media’s handling of this event. The event, carefully organized and planned by the Jackson family, was designed to whitewash Jackson's legacy and probably set the stage for an attempt to cash in on what's left of the estate.

Network anchors talked in hushed tones, reverently praising Michael Jackson's genius, talking about his contributions to society, praising him for teaching the world about love and never once mentioning the pedophilia controversy.

And yet.

Our watchdog media was along for the ride; indeed, they were the tour guides on the bus the Jackson family was driving.

My question is this: After the Michael Jackson Memorial fiasco, and the media's incredibly in-the-bag coverage of his death, how can anyone, ANYWHERE, regardless of race, creed, political persuasion, or religion, believe a SINGLE, SOLITARY thing that this entity tells them?

For instance, I posted a few days ago about the Jena Six controversy, and how it has now come out--very quietly--that the incident wasn't racially motivated at all. It was engineered by the race baiters and lapped up and regurgitated by the media because they know what sells. The same thing happened with he Duke Lacrosse case.

This very day, there are two stories to illustrate this point. First there is the case of the racist swim club. Now as I told a commenter below, what kind of a person would, in this day and age, in this ready-to-be-offended-at-the-slightest-provocation society, what kind of a person would actually say:

that several club members complained because the children “fundamentally changed the atmosphere” at the pool but that the complaints didn’t involve race.

Furthermore, the president of the swim club is an Obama supporter named John Duesler, who has already trotted out his requisite apology about the misunderstanding.

Duesler said day campers who were invited to the club couldn't come back for safety reasons and "it's very sad" that 65 elementary aged children may now think racism is the reason they can no longer swim at the private pool.

"We invited these clubs into our pool, we knew the kids were coming in from the city...due to a lack of pool availability this summer. We reached out to them, we invited them to our pool. And once the kids came, we've never done this before, and it's very unfortunate, there were just too many children for us to handle. This was a safety situation. Many of these children were not able to swim, most of them were not able to come and we were just overwhelmed with the sheer number of children that came to our club," Duesler explained.

The Creative Steps Day camp paid the club $1950 so Philadelphia kids could swim at the Montgomery County outdoor pool once a week. During their first trip to the pool, several campers said club members pulled their kids out of the water and some made racial remarks. Before their next outing, Duesler told the camp director swim privileges were being suspended and their money returned. His first explanation came in a statement Tuesday night when he said, "There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion…and the atmosphere of the club." That fueled what quickly became a national story and debate – was racism really that overt in the Philly suburbs?

"That was a terrible choice of words," blown out of proportion, he said Friday.

Meanwhile, the damage has been done. Regardless of whether the reason these kids were banned from the swim club was racism or not, that's what they will always think. All of the members of the Valley Swim Club will now be thought of as "racist". Duesler is probably tainted for life.

On the plus side, the way this story was covered made it go national. It was all over the internet. As I said to the commenter below, think about it REALLY think about it: Is there someone this stupid walking around who would voice these sentiments and not immediately know that they would ruin him forever???...or is it possible that this story is not quite what it seems? Considering stories like this generate controversy, and controversial stories generate ratings and rating generate $$, I tend to be a little more cynical about things like this. Especially after Jena and Duke.

The second story is just this side of ridiculous. The picture below was posted on the internet wherein Obama and Sarkozy are clearly checking out this young thang's booty.

But that's not the ridiculous part.

The ridiculous part is that ABC and other media outlets quickly seized on the direction the internet chatter was going and decided to publish an "explanation" for the President's oogling:

President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy trade places on a dais with "Junior G8" delegates.

On first glance, the snapshot appears to show President Obama caught in a moment of less than lofty analysis. But upon looking at the video, the moment might seem to appear quite innocent -- one of those times when a picture can be misleading. The president was on a higher step and was stepping down -- so he looked down to assure his footing as the woman was walking up the stairs.

Ummm....really? Don't these guys get themselves dizzy? I mean Clinton's objectification of women was a point of pride in the Democrat party--why make go to such lengths to refute what everyone knows: men are pigs. Of course he's going to check her out--he wouldn't be human if he didn't.

Be a little cynical folks. This is not your father's mainstream media anymore.

Power Vaccuum

So I think we can boil the Obama foreign policy down to one sentence: the U.S.A. is abdicating it's leadership position in the free world.

Obama's message to the world has been clear: the U.S. will not meddle to advance it's ideals, even when those ideals fall in line with our interests. We will stand on the sidelines and watch as democracy is suppressed in places like Honduras and Iran while the citizens plead for our help. In fact, the only country that merits strong words from this administration is Israel, who Obama believes should not defend itself if attacked (repeatedly) lest the U.S. be dragged into their conflict. (By the way, is there a major policy statement that has been made by Joe Biden in the last six months that HASN'T been publicly repudiated by Obama within hours?)

I misjudged Obama on foreign policy during the election; I thought he was simply naive. But it's more than that: he's isolationist and he's showing himself to be one of those liberals who have been consistently embarrassed by "America's big boot" in the world. This is not only naive, but it is anti-American; it's a fundamental disbelief in American ideals. It's a foreign policy that seeks, like Obama himself, popularity in the world instead of respect. And it's dangerous.

Of course, if we're not keeping corrupt regimes in line, we're not making anyone angry either. I think it is Obama's belief that by not meddling, these other hostile countries will simply leave us alone. Again, dangerously naive. He's basically announced to the world that military solutions are simply not palatable to this administration. While we dismantle our weapons, other less freedom loving countries will be building theirs, intent on ruling the world according to their ideals. Obama assumes that by apologizing for American ideals abroad that other countries have no desire to push their ideals on us. Again, dangerously naive and anti-American.

While we withdraw from our leadership position in the world, Russia and China are vying for that role. With no U.S. might keeping the tin pot dictators of the world at bay, all bets are off for basic human rights and peace, because you cannot broker peace from a position of weakness and mewling apologies. In order to broker peace, you must command the respect of those you hope to inspire. And the leaders of the world seem to all be figuring it out: The President of the United States is a lightweight.

No skin in the game

The WSJ recently ran two great articles about the collapse of the housing market. If you are even remotely interested in the causes of the sour economy and what we must do to turn it around, these two pieces are must-reads.

If, like the rest of the Obama-nation, you prefer to only see victims and exploiters, then by all means, skip this post and remain blissfully and irresponsibly ignorant.

First, the incomparable Stan Liebowitz (the chart above accompanies Liebowitz's analysis):

What is really behind the mushrooming rate of mortgage foreclosures since 2007? The evidence from a huge national database containing millions of individual loans strongly suggests that the single most important factor is whether the homeowner has negative equity in a house -- that is, the balance of the mortgage is greater than the value of the house. This means that most government policies being discussed to remedy woes in the housing market are misdirected.

Many policy makers and ordinary people blame the rise of foreclosures squarely on subprime mortgage lenders who presumably misled borrowers into taking out complex loans at low initial interest rates. Those hapless individuals were then supposedly unable to make the higher monthly payments when their mortgage rates reset upwards.

But the focus on subprimes ignores the widely available industry facts (reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association) that 51% of all foreclosed homes had prime loans, not subprime, and that the foreclosure rate for prime loans grew by 488% compared to a growth rate of 200% for subprime foreclosures. (These percentages are based on the period since the steep ascent in foreclosures began -- the third quarter of 2006 -- during which more than 4.3 million homes went into foreclosure.)

Sharing the blame in the popular imagination are other loans where lenders were largely at fault -- such as "liar loans," where lenders never attempted to validate a borrower's income or assets.

This common narrative also appears to be wrong, a conclusion that is based on my analysis of loan-level data from McDash Analytics, a component of Lender Processing Services Inc. It is the largest loan-level data source available, covering more than 30 million mortgages.

Todd Zywicki expands on this point with special emphasis on the creation of a new government financial products safety commission:

Imagine a man in California who speculated in real estate at the height of the housing bubble. He bought a house with no money down and an adjustable-rate mortgage. But before he could flip that house for a profit, the market collapsed. He then owed more than his house was worth, but he knew that under his state's laws it would be impossible for his bank to sue him for the balance of his loan if he abandoned the house to foreclosure.

What is this man likely to do?

Several hundred thousand people have found themselves in a similar situation in recent years, and they have walked away from their real estate investments. Nothing down, interest-only mortgages taken out by speculators in states with default-friendly laws have fueled the foreclosure crisis and have come to be seen as a major threat to the American financial system.

(...)

Treating all consumers as hapless victims rather than recognizing that many consumers rationally respond to incentives is a recipe for unintended consequences. It can lead to counterproductive regulation that makes loans more expensive and harder to get.

(...)

Instead of a new consumer financial products safety commission, Washington should revise the disclosures it mandates for mortgages, its tax and other incentives that encourage overinvestment in housing, and the incentives for homeowners to walk away from their homes. Our current problems are caused by misaligned incentives and the rational response of consumers and lenders to those incentives. It's not a crisis of consumer protection. A new agency premised on the erroneous belief what consumers need is to be protected from themselves is likely to do more harm than good.

Defense doesn't win the game

As conservatives, we've been playing defense for far too long.

Even when we were supposedly "in power" we were playing defense, when not defending Bush era policies we believed in, we were busy fighting against those Bush policies that characterized big government creep (Campaign Finance reform, creation of the department of Homeland Security, and Medicare prescription drug benefit, to name a few).

Because we abdicated the institution of the mainstream media a long time ago, we lost, and continue to lose, many battles of public opinion. The mainstream media long ago became the PR firm of the left, cleverly marketing liberal ideas in the most palatable manner for an apathetic public too lazy to look into, much less entertain, alternative ways of thinking. And if that wasn't bad enough, those small glimmers of fairness, or heaven=forbid, conservative-leaning media, are now being targeted for marginalization.

We long ago abdicated any influence at all in our educational institutions, where are children are regularly indoctrinated into liberal ideals of environmentalism, multi-culturalism, and anti-Americanism. Those of us who recognized this trend have spent many many hours attempting to counter this mis-information at home.

Most insulting of all, we've continually taken hits for greedy big businessmen who are in fact, in the pockets of big government lobbying to destroy competition. Contrary to conventional wisdom, these big businesses are not friends of conservatism or free market capitalism, yet their failures, their deceptions, are laid at our feet.

Republicans holding elected office have continuously betrayed our ideals, whether through sex scandals or caving in to liberal big government policies, the entire movement has been smeared by these bad apples to the point that the differences between the parties have been indistinguishable. We have been forced to elect unpalatable candidates (hello, Arlen Specter) because the alternative was unthinkable.

Now that unthinkable alternative has come to pass: Conservatives have been utterly marginalized and the Democrats are completely unleashed. There is no check, no balance, and every big government program true conservatives have been fighting against for years is now being rammed through channels with little thought or debate. It is a freight train, speeding down a hill towards some kind of Fascist Socialism and there are no brakes. Our only hope left is that liberals, as they always have, will over-reach and the public will wake up.

Thin hope indeed.

It's exhausting. There is not a single policy decision that the radical Obama administration has made so far that I do not vehemently oppose. As a conservative, I will keep making the arguments, but the arguments have already been made.

We can keep playing defense, but defense rarely puts points on the board. I'm not sure how to turn the game around, I only know that the defense has been on the field a long, long time. And they are getting tired.

Race baiters apologize for lying about Jena 6 incident

Ooops, wait. I made a mistake. There was no apology.

But they did lie about the incident being racially motivated, which I have been saying for a long time ( I wrote a January 2008 column about it and a blog post here that contains a link to a great column about the incident by Charlotte Allen)

Five of the six black high school students charged with attempted murder in 2006 for allegedly beating a white classmate pleaded no contest in a Louisiana court Friday, closing the book on a racially charged case.

The men agreed to plea deals that settled lawsuits filed against them by Justin Barker and his family the year after the December 4, 2006, incident in the town of Jena, population 3,000. The case was referred to as the "Jena Six."

To refresh your memory, the six African American yutes beat the crap out of a white boy because they claimed he hurled racial epithets at them. Then all sorts of tall tales erupted, not the least of which were the three nooses hung from the "whites only tree of knowledge" which painted this case as not one of thuggery (which it was) but of the black victims rising up against their white oppressors (which it was not).

The case drew national headlines when the teens were charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit attempted murder.

After the charges triggered protests from critics who said they were too strict, a judge reduced the charges against Shaw, Jesse Ray Beard, Robert Bailey Jr., Carwin Jones and Bryant Purvis to battery and conspiracy.

The sixth defendant, Mychal Bell, pleaded guilty in December 2007 to a misdemeanor second-degree battery charge and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

At the hearing, attorneys representing the five men read a statement expressing sympathy to the Barkers and acknowledging that Justin Barker did not use a racial slur. They also apologized to the residents of Jena for the uproar caused by the case.

For those of you taking notes, those of you who may understandably be a bit confused in navigating these ever-changing waters of what is and and is not racist, this incident is not going to offer much clarity for you. Questioning the legitimacy of the racial aspect of this incident was in and of itself considered racist during the time it was happening. If you weren't cheering on the "modern civil rights movement's" version of Montgomery, Alabama or denouncing the continued prominence of the Jim Crow south in this day and age, then you were a racist. Even if you were a white person who had no opinion on this incident, you probably were harboring an "undercurrent" of racism.

Now, just like the Duke Lacross rape case, the false charges of racism will be quietly swept under the rug so that the race baiters can use their same weapons another day.

Nope. There's absolutely no need to correct the record. Move along. There's nothing to see here.

H/T to Wyatt at Support Your Local Gunfighter.

How do you silence dissenting opinion? Call it racism.

Having been a casualty of this kind of tactic in the recent past, I'm only mildly surprised that the target this time is Fox News, the only network news left that doesn't follow Barack Obama around in slobbering worship (see here and here and here just for starters). Blonde Sagacity calls my attention to this Facebook Group, whose mission, I suppose, is to speak "truth to power." Here's their purpose (and yes, they put it in all caps, just in case you weren't clear about how angry they are.):

WE ARE IN THE YEAR 2009 AND STILL WE HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THE MEDIA ONLY COVERING THE NEGATIVES OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY. CALLING OUR FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN PRESIDENT A SENATOR. NOT GIVING HIM THE PROPER COVERAGE AND SUPPORT. TRYING TO PIN ALL THE BLAME ON HIM AND HE HAS ONLY BEEN IN OFFICE FOR 100 DAYS. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. WE SHOULD HAVE BOYCOTTED FOX AFTER KATRINA WHEN THEY CALLED OUR PEOPLE LOOTERS AND RUFUGEES. THIS IS THE GROUP WERE WE STAND UP AND SAY NO MORE!!!!!

The goal of these types of people, and the cowardly lackeys who cave into their demands, is to de-legitimize any criticism of the current administration by calling it racism or claiming that the critics are themselves racist. Barack Obama is the most radical president this country has ever seen; the policies he has rammed through congress in his six months in office stand in direct contradiction to our founding pricipals. But instead of debating the criticism on the merits, these people use smear tactics and bullying by leveling false charges of racism. It's an old and proven tactic of the left and instead of losing it's effectiveness during the reign of our first President of the "post racial era", it's actually gained effectiveness as a bludgeon to keep the illusion of hope 'n' change alive.

I weep for the future of our country.

The Tragedy of Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson's life was a tragedy long before his death yesterday. Because of his enormous success, he was able to surround himself only with yes men--sychophants who never contradicted him and never had the power to save him from himself. He was so famous and so rich he could create an alternate reality for himself with his own rules.

For years, every time I heard a song by the Jackson Five, I felt sad thinking of the cute little boy he was and how far away that little boy was from the freak he had become. The freakish plastic surgery, the allegations of pedophilia, the incredible financial debts, odd mannerisms, the dangling baby, and the whole Jackson family's bizzarre tendency to put their psychological quirks into song, sadly now seem to overshadow his tremendous talent. As the news media now trots out the enablers he surrounded himself with, both famous and freakish themselves, (Liz Taylor, Madonna, Corey Feldman, Uri Geller), it's easy to forget now, 15 to 20 years after the peak of his popularity, what a gifted entertainer he was.

Before he was Jacko, he was the King of Pop. The clip above is from the Motown 25th anniversary show and it shows a Michael Jackson on the cusp of super stardom. Many people will remember it, as I do, as the first time they ever saw Jackson's signature Moonwalk. Forget the Michael Jackson weirdness for a few minutes and jump back into the mid-eighties to enjoy what was truly a landmark performance by one of the greatest entertainers of all time.