As has been said here before, he hasn't even been inaugurated yet and they're ripping him a new one.  But the ripping is coming from the left!  Ted Rall is fit to be tied over 0bama's promise to bring the troops home only to appear now to be backing out of his promise with some slick lawyer speak here. 

" “It’s time to end this war,” Obama concluded. Ending the war would mean following the political cartoonist Matt Bors’ prescription: The troops would go to the airport. They would board planes. They would fly away.

But Obama doesn’t want to end the war.

Obama will classify some units as “combat troops” and send them to Afghanistan, which he wants to expand into an even bigger war. But tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of troops, will remain in Iraq, killing and getting killed. " 

Hoo wee.  Mr. Rall even calls for "preemptive impeachment". 

For those of you who actually voted for the guy based on his promises, and are feeling just a little bit disillusioned, I have good news!  An enterprising entrepeneur has just the thing for you to show your feelings, t-shirts!  And more t-shirts!  And bumper stickers too!

Which is worse, candied yams or having your dinner interrupted by someone who doesn't even like you?

" As Obama entered the room, it was absent of the regular fanfare of cheering and clapping. The diners were polite, staying seated at their respective tables and waited for the president-elect to come to them to stand up. "

It was Democrat in good standing, John Kerry who said about the military, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq."   Yesterday, members of the military in this chow hall showed they are much smarter than the Dems give them credit for.

This is just typical of the California Supreme Court to rule that good samaritans that stop to help someone can be sued if they cause an injury.    Every year at work, we are given cpr and first aid training, and during that training we are always told that we are protected by the "good samaritan law" from being sued.  I for one will now be thinking long and hard about my own family's financial well being if I am ever in a situation to give any aid to anyone. 

"It was an honest mistake!  Really!"  Yeah, right.

http://www.suntimes.com/new...

 " Blagojevich and Holder appeared together at a March 24, 2004, news conference to announce Holder's role as "special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board" -- a post that was to pay Holder and his Washington, D.C. law firm up to $300,000.

Holder, however, omitted that event from his 47-page response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire made public this week -- an oversight he plans to correct after a Chicago Sun-Times inquiry, Obama's transition team indicated late Tuesday.

Holder signed the questionnaire on Sunday -- five days after Blagojevich's arrest for allegedly putting Obama's U.S. Senate seat up for sale. "

So how long do we wait for them to all get their stories straight before they start answering the questions? 

A couple of little facts have convinced me that GM needs to get their house in order through the bankruptcy process instead of a taxpayer bailout.

In 2007, both GM and Toyota sold more than 9,000,000 vehicles each. 

Yet GM lost $38.7 billion while Toyota made $15 billion. 

Now I haven't yet won a Nobel prize for economics, but I think that if your sales are equal and your earnings are separated by over 50 billion dollars, you've got some serious soul searching to do if you want to continue being in business.  The American taxpayer can't save you.

Not only that, he is also the President-elect's speechwriter.  This is/was a non story because it is to be expected of Democrats. "Dog bites man" stories aren't news. 

From Politico.com.  I don't think the press will ever ask or pursue these questions.  They have all but sworn their allegiance to all things 0bama since the campaign.  But maybe, just possibly there is some reporter who will get hit with a sudden guilt and sense of decency and ask at least the fourth question during a live news conference that can't be edited.  But I'm just dreaming now. 

The stinging criminal complaint against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris raises lots of questions for President-elect Barack Obama – a few of which he answered on Thursday, at his first news conference since Blagojevich was charged in the cash-for-Senate-seat affair..

Here are seven worth asking:

1 – “Did you communicate directly or indirectly with Blagojevich about picking your replacement in the U.S. Senate?”

Obama issued a categorical statement Tuesday that he personally hadn’t spoken with Blagojevich about the seat — but seemed to correct himself in a way that suggested others around Obama might have.

“I had no contact with the governor or his office and, so we were not – I was not aware of what was happening," Obama said.

Yet, according to prosecutors’ characterizations of Blagojevich’s wiretapped telephone conversations, the Illinois governor seemed to believe he had a channel of communications with Obama’s team.

For instance, Blagojevich was recorded speaking to a union official who Blagojevich “understood … was an emissary” to discuss the interest of Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett in the seat, according to the criminal complaint unveiled Tuesday.

But at some point, Blagojevich seemed to become aware that Obama’s team had no interest in his favored option – he would pick Jarrett in exchange for being named secretary of health and human services, prosecutor allege. How did he know that?

Asked at the press conference if he or his people had interacted with Blagojevich or his office about filling the vacant Illinois Senate seat, Obama said he, personally, had not.

But he left the door open to the possibility that his aides may have and promised that he would reveal the results of an investigation of any such interactions “in the next few days.”

He said: “what I want to do is gather all the facts about any staff contacts that may have taken place between the transition office and the governor’s office.”

He asserted, though, that no one on his staff engaged Blagojevich in his alleged efforts to trade the Senate seat for personal benefit.

2 – “Why didn’t you or someone on your team correct your close adviser David Axelrod when he said you had spoken to Blagojevich about picking your replacement?”

Last month, Axelrod unambiguously described a conversation between Obama and Blagojevich about filling the seat.

“I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names, many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them," Axelrod told an interviewer from Chicago’s Fox affiliate.

But then, Axelrod retracted the comment – after the president-elect asserted Tuesday that he hadn’t spoken to Blagojevich. Axelrod issued a statement saying he "was mistaken when I told an interviewer last month that the President-elect has spoken directly to Governor Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy. They did not then, or at any time, discuss the subject." 

3. “When did you learn the investigation involved Blagojevich’s alleged efforts to ‘sell’ your Senate seat, or of the governor’s impending arrest?”

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said it was not until Tuesday that Obama learned the details of the complaint against Blagojevich – the same day it was released to the public – and wouldn’t say exactly when or how Obama was notified.

But at least some people got an early heads-up: Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. told reporters that he was notified Monday night by federal prosecutors that the investigation was coming to a head, that an arrest was imminent and that Jackson was not a target.

4 – “Did you or anyone close to you contact the FBI or U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald about Blagojevich’s alleged efforts to sell your Senate seat to the highest bidder?”

Blagojevich seems to believe that Obama’s team was aware of – and had rejected – his offers, telling Harris in a wiretapped Nov. 11 conversation that Obama was “not willing to give (Blagojevich) anything except appreciation” for picking Jarrett.

If Blagojevich contacted anyone on Obama’s team even hinting at a possible pay-for-play arrangement, it seems they would have been obligated to report that to law enforcement.

One report out of Chicago suggested the possible tipster was Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s pick for chief of staff and a potential conduit for any communications from Blagojevich’s office to Obama. But Emanuel’s office has denied that story.

5 – “Did federal investigators interview you or anyone close to you in the investigation?”

Fitzgerald said Tuesday he was “not going to speak for what the President-elect was aware of,” but it’s difficult to imagine his investigators did not reach out to Obama or his team during the course of the investigations into Blagojevich and businessman Tony Rezko, given how closely the subject matter involved Obama.

Rezko, a former Obama fundraiser who in June was convicted of 16 corruption-related counts, had alleged that prosecutors pushed him for dirt on both Blagojevich and Obama.

This one was answered directly at the press conference. Asked if federal investigators had contacted him or his people in the course of the investigation, Obama said that neither he nor his people had been interviewed.

6 – “When did you and Blagojevich last speak and about what?”

Obama and Blagojevich both attended the National Governors Association meeting last week in Philadelphia and were photographed shaking hands at the event.

Before the meeting, Blagojevich was quoted saying he had asked Obama’s transition team for federal stimulus aid of $3 billion over the next three years to help fill Illinois’ estimated $2 billion deficit.

If Obama had spoken on the phone with him since Election Day, it’s conceivable that the conversation would have been recorded by the FBI, which in late October won a court order authorizing the wiretapping.

7 – “Do you regret supporting Blagojevich?”

Obama endorsed Blagojevich in his two gubernatorial runs and was among his key advisors during his first bid, in 2002.

During the governor’s reelection campaign in 2006 – with press reports swirling about a grand jury investigation into Blagojevich’s alleged jobs-for-contributions scheme – Obama praised the governor as a leader “who has delivered consistently on behalf of the people of Illinois.”

It doesn’t seem like he shared the same high regard for Obama, at least not lately, considering that during a Nov. 10 conference call with advisers he called his old political ally and the president-elect an obscene name.
 

Well, sartorially speaking. 

A 106 degree temperature will not keep me home from work on this day.