Newspaper of Record? Not any more...

'New York Times' Spiked Obama Donor Story
A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”

And they talk about a vast right-wing conspiracy? Look who's involved here: The campaign, ACORN, and The Times. what more proof do you need?

And listen to the response of the Times:

“In response to your questions to our reporter, Stephanie Strom, we do not discuss our newsgathering and won’t comment except to say that political considerations played no role in our decisions about how to cover this story or any other story about President Obama.”

Right... political considerations play no role in our decisions. Are you still selling that bridge in Brooklyn? Because if I'm buying your latest line of bullshit, then I'm interested in the bridge, too.

Story here.

Time to get OUT!!!

A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

It's time to leave the UN. These global socialists, fascists, and dictators are after one thing and one thing only. One World Government. The only way to achieve this globalism is to reduce the United State's Superpower Role as well as encroach on our sovereignty to make decisions in the best interest of the US. They are going to use the hoax of unproven science that was once "global warming," and now called "climate change" to place confiscatory taxes on productive countries. Yes. it's a hoax. Lets hope our leaders hoist these idiots off our backs once and for all. But with Obama in the White house, well,... (notice they didn't try this shit while Bush was in office).

From Fox News... and yes... They are fair and balanced. At least more so than the other network news services. Go ahead. Prove me wrong.

Tales of the T.O.T.U.S.

TOTUS was missing at the last press conference. Or was it?

Read more here.

Death of the Obama dream

Obama is losing the love of his enamored press. They are just now realizing what an empty suit he is, and that he truly is grasping at straws. Here's an excellent opinion piece by Noemie Emery in the DC Examiner.

Well, that was fast.

On March 20, only two months after the cosmic anointing, Vanity Fair, of all places, unloaded on Barack Obama, in the terms it had reserved for the past four or five years for the likes of George W. Bush.

Well, not the whole magazine, but one of its writers, media writer Michael Wolff, took an axe to the president, in a posting beginning “Sheesh, the guy is Jimmy Carter,” ending “This guy is leaden and this show is in trouble,” and titled “Barack Obama is a Terrible Bore.”

The same day, ex-fan Peggy Noonan called him “insubstantial and weightless...not fully focused...jumping from issue to issue and venue to venue from day to day.” “The administration’s difficulties...have created an unfortunate impression of incompetence,”
said The Economist. Politico noted that his skills as a salesman have begun to desert him.

It all came at the end of what Rick Klein of ABC News called Obama’s ‘lost week,’ which got worse on Sunday, when he was attacked by the New York Times in three columns and one editorial. One warned of an oncoming fall of Katrina dimensions. And these were his friends.

Actually, since he was sworn, in most of his weeks have been lost ones, or at least weeks headed downward, the problem being that three or four variations on the theme of incompetence have had time to harden and set.

First, the financial crisis he was hired to fix has only grown worse under his tutelage, losing another 2,000-plus points on the Dow since his ascension. Second, the ‘smoothest transition on record’ stopped being smooth when Bush went back to Texas, and has since been a mélange of scandals and dithering. Third, the immense sums in his budget are starting to stun the more moderate Democrats, not to mention the Obamacons, who once put their hopes in his ‘moderate’ temperament.

Fourth, he and some of his high-profile picks have shown a repeated addiction to unforced errors and slights---mixing up names, misplacing dates, dissing Nancy Reagan, dissing the British Prime Minister, dissing the Special Olympics, created and run by John Kennedy’s sister—giving the impression the administration is run by the under-informed and the boorish and socially compromised.

Would Caroline’s father, who took part in his family’s effort to raise his retarded sister as normal, and who as president put great store in his special relationship with “Uncle Harold” McMillan, have found this amusing? One rather thinks not.

In short, the idea of Obama, the eloquent, elegant, trans-racial hero, able to inspire his way around anything, ran into reality and was dissolved by it, revealing a not-well-prepared neophyte politician with an embarrassing penchant for gaffes.

The markets are down, the price tags are up, the British are piqued, and the independents are heading back to the Republicans, who now have a (slight) lead in the generic ballot, for the first time in nearly three years.

Obama’s teleprompter has its own blog, its own code name---Totus--- and is building a following. One laughs with it, and at him, which cannot be promising. For a would-be Messiah, this is hardly good news.

Way back last year---it was called the campaign--- some people, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, to name only two of them, seemed to suggest that something like this might happen, that there were risks to electing someone with no record or background to speak of, who had never done anything well except talk. They were dismissed as too old and too cranky, jealous that they too did not have a fan base of cult-like intensity.

This was probably right---at least about jealousy---but it doesn’t mean they were wrong on the rest. They were waiting for the bubble to burst, which it did, but too late for their benefit.

“Democrats are worried that the Obama spell will break between the time of his nomination and the time of the election, and deny him the White House,” Charles Krauthammer wrote February 15, 2008, winning the Seer of the Year prize for prognostication. “My guess is that he can maintain the spell just past Inauguration Day. After which will come the awakening. It will be rude.”

Examiner columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”

This is a good sign. People are starting to wake up.

Brilliant!

Maybe someone will say this to Obama?

Read Dan's comments on his blog.

Resignation

The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G.

DEAR Mr. Liddy,

It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context:

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

You and I have never met or spoken to each other, so I’d like to tell you about myself. I was raised by schoolteachers working multiple jobs in a world of closing steel mills. My hard work earned me acceptance to M.I.T., and the institute’s generous financial aid enabled me to attend. I had fulfilled my American dream.

I started at this company in 1998 as an equity trader, became the head of equity and commodity trading and, a couple of years before A.I.G.’s meltdown last September, was named the head of business development for commodities. Over this period the equity and commodity units were consistently profitable — in most years generating net profits of well over $100 million. Most recently, during the dismantling of A.I.G.-F.P., I was an integral player in the pending sale of its well-regarded commodity index business to UBS. As you know, business unit sales like this are crucial to A.I.G.’s effort to repay the American taxpayer.

The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation. I never received any pay resulting from the credit default swaps that are now losing so much money. I did, however, like many others here, lose a significant portion of my life savings in the form of deferred compensation invested in the capital of A.I.G.-F.P. because of those losses. In this way I have personally suffered from this controversial activity — directly as well as indirectly with the rest of the taxpayers.

I have the utmost respect for the civic duty that you are now performing at A.I.G. You are as blameless for these credit default swap losses as I am. You answered your country’s call and you are taking a tremendous beating for it.

But you also are aware that most of the employees of your financial products unit had nothing to do with the large losses. And I am disappointed and frustrated over your lack of support for us. I and many others in the unit feel betrayed that you failed to stand up for us in the face of untrue and unfair accusations from certain members of Congress last Wednesday and from the press over our retention payments, and that you didn’t defend us against the baseless and reckless comments made by the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut.

My guess is that in October, when you learned of these retention contracts, you realized that the employees of the financial products unit needed some incentive to stay and that the contracts, being both ethical and useful, should be left to stand. That’s probably why A.I.G. management assured us on three occasions during that month that the company would “live up to its commitment” to honor the contract guarantees.

That may be why you decided to accelerate by three months more than a quarter of the amounts due under the contracts. That action signified to us your support, and was hardly something that one would do if he truly found the contracts “distasteful.”

That may also be why you authorized the balance of the payments on March 13.

At no time during the past six months that you have been leading A.I.G. did you ask us to revise, renegotiate or break these contracts — until several hours before your appearance last week before Congress.

I think your initial decision to honor the contracts was both ethical and financially astute, but it seems to have been politically unwise. It’s now apparent that you either misunderstood the agreements that you had made — tacit or otherwise — with the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, various members of Congress and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York, or were not strong enough to withstand the shifting political winds.

You’ve now asked the current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. to repay these earnings. As you can imagine, there has been a tremendous amount of serious thought and heated discussion about how we should respond to this breach of trust.

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.

That is why I have decided to donate 100 percent of the effective after-tax proceeds of my retention payment directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn. This is not a tax-deduction gimmick; I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget. Our earnings have caused such a distraction for so many from the more pressing issues our country faces, and I would like to see my share of it benefit those truly in need.

On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes. In light of the uncertainty over the ultimate taxation and legal status of this payment, the actual amount I donate may be less — in fact, it may end up being far less if the recent House bill raising the tax on the retention payments to 90 percent stands. Once all the money is donated, you will immediately receive a list of all recipients.

This choice is right for me. I wish others at A.I.G.-F.P. luck finding peace with their difficult decision, and only hope their judgment is not clouded by fear.

Mr. Liddy, I wish you success in your commitment to return the money extended by the American government, and luck with the continued unwinding of the company’s diverse businesses — especially those remaining credit default swaps. I’ll continue over the short term to help make sure no balls are dropped, but after what’s happened this past week I can’t remain much longer — there is too much bad blood. I’m not sure how you will greet my resignation, but at least Attorney General Blumenthal should be relieved that I’ll leave under my own power and will not need to be “shoved out the door.”

Sincerely,

Jake DeSantis

Welcome to the world of government regulation and the spineless who kowtow to it.

Thank you, Jake for telling it like it is, and I hope A.C.O.R.N. doesn't protest outside your house.

I have highlighted what I think are the most important parts of the letter.

OpEd Posted in the NYTimes

T.O.T.U.S.

Creeping Communism

Wake up people, it's Creeping Communism:

The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document.

Holy shit!Who does this guy think he is? He took an oath to uphold the Constitution. It appears he's never read it. Where will it end? Hopefully in the 2010 elections when we can flush out the Democrat Controlled Congress and put an end to this kind of bullshit.

In the Washington Times no less. Even they're getting afraid. Newspapers may be next!

Perfect analogy

Is this the end of America?

Helicopter Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve is dropping trillions of fresh paper dollars on the world economy, the President of the United States is cracking jokes on late night comedy shows, his energy minister is threatening a trade war over carbon emissions, his treasury secretary is dithering over a banking reform program amid rising concerns over his competence and a monumentally dysfunctional U.S. Congress is launching another public jihad against corporations and bankers.

On their own, these problems are disastrous, but with all these problems colliding, now—all at once, may spell doom for the USA. The gross incompetence, arrogance, and power-lust of the Obama administration and sitting Liberal congress may just destroy us.

More of Terrence Corcoran's brilliant observations are shown here.

Our Government/Politicians in a Nutshell

Problem = There is no real problem.
Fix it anyway to look busy = The creation of a real problem.
Sound Familiar? Think housing market.

To refresh your memory as to how our government caused this mess by catering to the entitled that didn't go out and earn their lot, click here

We're Doomed

This is a congresswoman. Who votes on stimulus bills.

Pitchforks and Torches

People are starting to get pissed off. It's about time that politicians were put on notice.

Earth to Arlen: Switch Parties

When in Pennsylvania, do as the Pennsylvanians do.
It'll bolster your political Career.

Read about what Arlen 'should' really do here

Count the Lies

I counted 7... how many did you find? And all in 1 minute 58 seconds