The View From Here - drilnliftcrude's Blog - Bakersfield.com

Yet Another "Taxes Are For Little People" Story

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:17:05 PST

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Another Obama nominee has tax issues! Impossible you say? I know, it sounds so far fetched how a the Messiah, the President of “hope and change” could make this mistake, AGAIN. Her name is Lael Brainard and she is Obama’s nominee for undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs (ironic isn’t it?) Lael Brainard was late in paying real estate taxes in 2005, 2006 and 2007 according to the AP. The AP though seems a biut off in its counting. They claim this is the fifth Obama nominee with tax issues. Maybe they forget a couple of the other Obama nominees who have “issues” with taxes such as Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle, Hilda Solis, Nancy Killefer, Ron Kirk and Kathleen Sebelius. By my count, this is now the 7th Obama nominee with tax issues, but maybe the AP is simply using the Recovery.gov standard for adding up things.

http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/2009/11/18/another-obama-nominee-faces-tax-troubles-lael-brainard/

Heckuva Job There, Eric

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:33:50 PST

I'm no fan of Lindsey Grahamnesty, but he sure made Eric Holder look pathetic in Senate hearings concerning the upcoming criminal trial of 9-11 terrorists in New York.

Even NPR (no bastion of conservatism) noted that the Attorney General should have been more prepaired.

So How's That Auto Bailout Going?

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:26:36 PST

Fiat pulls the plug on Chrysler hybrid and electric car plans

There will be no electric car named Chrysler, Dodge or Jeep. At least for the forseable future. Chrysler's new owner, Fiat SpA, has pulled the plug on Chrysler's plans to build and market EV vehicles, and even hybrid vehicles.

The decision by Fiat SEO Sergio Marchionne is a major voltage reduction for Chrysler. It is also a direct slap in the face of US taxpayers, who gave Chrysler a $12.5 Billion bail-out package, in part to help float Chrysler's plans for its ENVI program to develop and market fuel efficient electric cars. In addition, the Department of Energy gave Chrysler another $70 million in grants in August for this program.

Will Fiat return the money? Unlikely.

And Gm isn't looking like it will be able offer an IPO in 2010 like it said as it's sales are down 36% while the industry is at 27%. That would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 billion of taxpayer money out the window.

I can hardly wait till Zero and the dems get hold of our health care system. Not.

Liberal Activist Group Thinks Ft Hood Killer Was Speaking For The American Military Officer Corp

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:12:13 PST

A Quote from their website:

"The recent shootings at Ft. Hood and the resignation of top Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh demonstrate how even our military officers are opposed to US strategy in Afghanistan."

Pretty black and white, liberals think that Major Hasan is representative of American military officers. Has President Hussein apologized to the Afghans yet?

The Right Decision To Use The A-Bomb To End WWII?

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:28:21 PST

Members of "The Greatest Generation" that sacrificed and suffered through the great depression and World War II probably never imagined that they would live to see the day when the President of the United States could not answer the question, "Was dropping the A-bomb the right decision?". But that is exactly what happened yesterday in Japan. He was asked twice and could not, after stumbling and dithering, give an answer. That is pathetic.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2009/11/13/obama-fails-defend-u-s-bombing-hiroshima-nagasaki

How Low Will He Go?

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:42:10 PST

Andrew Malcom calls this a "Wow Bow".

The Khalid Shiekh Mohammed Lower Manhattan Reunion Tour

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:14:02 PST

I love the way the Baseball Crank puts it.

So, Barack Obama will be staging his own New York production of Chicago, with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as Roxy Hart ("You had it coming, you had it coming, you only have yourselves to blame...." ). We will be treated to months upon months of front page headlines giving a platform to this lunatic war criminal. The courthouses and City office buildings in lower Manhattan (City Hall, the state courts, the immigration offices, the Court of International Trade, the US Attorney's Office, the DA's office, and the main city office building that does marriage licenses and the like are all within about a two-block radius of the federal courthouses and the Metropolitan Correctional Center) will be snarled with massive security, as if lower Manhattan needs more traffic and more armed men.We'll have to have pretrial hearings on the inevitable countless motions about how KSM was apprehended and the evidence against him collected, undoubtedly to the detriment of vital sources of intelligence, like when we lost the ability to track Osama bin Laden by cellphone after our tracing of his calls was revealed by a prosecution under the DOJ Criminal Division then headed by...Eric Holder.

And that's even before he starts in on the sob stories about being waterboarded. I'm not seriously concerned that KSM stands any chance of being acquitted, but a hung jury? It only takes one person with extreme political or religious views, one juror who just can't abide the death penalty (even assuming Obama's DOJ pursues it). Just imagine the controversy, if there are Muslims in the jury pool, over what questions prosecutors are permitted to ask them and whether they can be challenged. And of course, it sends the message to our enemies that there's nothing you can do to us that will get you sent through a process rougher than the one we used on Michael Vick or Martha Stewart.

I know I have spoken and written many rough things about Obama, but as Michael Moore would say, most New Yorkers voted for the man - why is he doing this to us?

It's impossible, really, to caricature this White House; even Josiah Bartlett didn't run through this many liberal stereotypes in his first season. Obama needs new writers. Blow up the World Trade Center and kill 3,000 Americans? Jail! Don't buy health insurance? Jail! Win the Nobel Prize for doing jack squat. Travel to Copenhagen to beg and grovel unsuccessfully for the Olympics, and pledge to go visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but blow off traveling to Berlin to commemorate the victory of freedom over Communism (then give a tepid speech on the subject that refuses to acknowledge Ronald Reagan). Commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland by unilaterally abandoning missile defense installations in Poland.

Insult and disdain one faithful ally after another - Britain, India, Israel, Poland, Colombia, you name it - and cozy up to our enemies, with nothing to show for it - nothing to show for anything he's done in foreign affairs. All but ignore democratic protests in Iran while supporting an illegal effort by Honduras' president to stay on beyond the end of his term. Suddenly complain about corruption and electoral fraud in Afghanistan, while seeking the favor of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and Vladimir Putin - heck, Obama endorsed half a dozen people in Chicago more corrupt than Hamid Karzai. On and on and on we go, with President Apology constantly straining to run down his country's record and talk up the propagandized view of history of its enemies. He's taken more time to "evaluate" General McChrystal's recommendations about Afghan policy than it took George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan and capture Kabul after September 11. It would be funny if it wasn't tragically stupid and bound to get people killed. There is no mistake of our past that Obama is unwilling to remake.

If there's an upside to all this, after months of watching KSM up close, even liberal New Yorkers may be ready to give Dick Cheney a medal.

Charles Krauthammer puts it right with his statement, "Giving KSM the rights of an American citizen is unconscionable."

And finally, Andrew McCarthy makes a strong case that this whole thing is an attempt by an extreme leftist administration to put America on trial and to try and make a "war crimes" case against those who have been trying to protect us since 9-11.

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

Obama Snubs Fort Hood To Relax At Camp David

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:37:10 PST

While Dubya and Laura give a lesson on class acts...

the Narcissist in chief doesn't listen.

November 07, 2009

Obama snubs Ft. Hood to relax at Camp David

Clarice Feldman

Dan Riehl checks the President's schedule and learns that Obama's not going to Fort Hood, but rather to Camp David for the weekend. In an update, Dan notes that his predecessor is more sensitive to the situation.

Fox Reports GWB and Laura spent a few hours at Fort Hood, no photo ops. Now that's a CIC.

Are you kidding me? Camp frickin' David? What, does he have a tee time close by? For heaven's sakes, he's the CIC. And he's taking the weekend off? This guy simply doesn't care. Unbelievable via Fox.

11:25AM THE PRESIDENT addresses the House Democratic Caucus - Cannon House Office Building

2:30PM THE PRESIDENT makes a statement to the press on Health Care - Rose Garden

2:45PM THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY depart The White House en route Camp David - South Lawn

That Dancing with the Indians conference must have really worn the poor guy out so much he can't spare time to comfort the survivors of the jihadi Major's massacre.

Government Run Health Care

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:50:19 PST

Post Office Returns 107,831 Tax Refund Checks to IRS Due to Faulty Addresses

Oh, but it will be different when the gov't run health care agency inform's you that you have a compatible donor for that liver transplant.

Gruesome Halloween Food

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:21:50 PDT

Would you eat this?

Here is how it was made. Pretty crafty.

Gallup: The Top Ideological Group Is...

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:43:57 PDT

The next time someone tries to crow about the "shrinking Republican party", they may want to look at this poll from Gallup that shows the trending on all fronts is not all hope and change unicorns and butterflies for the liberals.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/123854/Conservatives-Maintain-Edge-Top-Ideological-Group.aspx

A Taste of Nationalized Healthcare

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:28:41 PDT

President Obama's late-night declaration of a nationwide public health emergency last night shouldn't be allowed to obscure the most important lesson of the developing swine flu crisis - The same government that only weeks ago promised abundant supplies of swine flu vaccine by mid-October will be running your health care system under Obamacare.

On Sept. 13, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, told ABC's This Week program that the government was on schedule to deliver an "ample supply" of swine flu vaccine by mid-October:

"We're on track to have an ample supply rolling by the middle of October. But we may have some early vaccine as early as the first full week in October. We'll get the vaccine out the door as fast as it rolls off the production line."

But here we are five weeks later and news reports are coming in from across the nation of long waiting lines of people wanting the shot, but being turned away because of grossly inadequate supplies. The typical explanation from public health offiials is that the swine flu vaccine requires more time to be cultivated than seasonal flu vaccine.

That's no doubt true, but did federal public health officials just discover that fact? These are the same government officials who will be in charge of your health care under the government-run health care system being sought by Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress.

And the president's declaration contains this statement that is rich with irony in the context of the debate on health care reform: "The foundation of our national approach to the H1N1 flu has been preparedness at all levels -- personal, business, and government -- and this proclamation helps that effort by advancing our overall response capability," according to Fox News.

The declaration will allow waiving of federal regulations on a case-by-case basis. But how will we waive an entire government-run health care system?

Here's something else to think about: How will Obama and congressional Democrats seek to take advantage of this public health crisis? This is, after all, the administration that never lets a good crisis go to waste, right?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/From-the-people-who-promised-swine-flu-shots---Government-run-health-care-65900377.html

Alan Grayson gets Punked

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:36:42 PDT

Rep Alan Grayson unveiled his new "Names of the Dead" website for people to list the names of those that supposedly died because they didn't have Obamacare. And what do you know! Apparently, Lassie, Wile E Coyote, and Buck Rogers all died for lack of the government run healthcare that this fruitcake wants to spend money we don't have on.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/alan-grayson-unveils-names-of-the-dead-web-site----and-gets-punked.php

He really has to be incredibly dense not to see that coming when he put up that website. The country is in the best of hands.

Save The Planet: Eat A Dog?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:25:34 PDT

The choice is simple, Fido or global warming. The world is not supposed to be fair.

The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, researchers have found.

Victoria University professors Brenda and Robert Vale, architects who specialise in sustainable living, say pet owners should swap cats and dogs for creatures they can eat, such as chickens or rabbits, in their provocative new book Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living.

The couple have assessed the carbon emissions created bypopular pets, taking into account the ingredients of pet food and the land needed to create them.

"If you have a German shepherd or similar-sized dog, for example, its impact every year is exactly the same as driving a large car around," Brenda Vale said.

"A lot of people worry about having SUVs but they don't worry about having Alsatians and what we are saying is, well, maybe you should be because the environmental impact ... is comparable."

In a study published in New Scientist, they calculated a medium dog eats 164 kilograms of meat and 95kg of cereals every year. It takes 43.3 square metres of land to produce 1kg of chicken a year. This means it takes 0.84 hectares to feed Fido.

They compared this with the footprint of a Toyota Land Cruiser, driven 10,000km a year, which uses 55.1 gigajoules (the energy used to build and fuel it). One hectare of land can produce 135 gigajoules a year, which means the vehicle's eco-footprint is 0.41ha – less than half of the dog's.

They found cats have an eco-footprint of 0.15ha – slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf. Hamsters have a footprint of 0.014ha – keeping two of them is equivalent to owning a plasma TV.

Professor Vale says the title of the book is meant to shock, but the couple, who do not have a cat or dog, believe the reintroduction of non-carnivorous pets into urban areas would help slow down global warming.

"The title of the book is a little bit of a shock tactic, I think, but though we are not advocating eating anyone's pet cat or dog there is certainly some truth in the fact that if we have edible pets like chickens for their eggs and meat, and rabbits and pigs, we will be compensating for the impact of other things on our environment."

Professor Vale took her message to Wellington City Council last year, but councillors said banning traditional pets or letting people keep food animals in their homes were not acceptable options.

Kelly Jeffery, a Paraparaumu german shepherd breederwho once owned a large SUV, said eliminating traditional pets was "over the top".

"I think we need animals because they are a positive in our society. We can all make little changes to reduce carbon footprints but without pointing the finger at pets, which are part of family networks."

Owning rabbits is legal anywhere. Local bodies allow chickens, with some restrictions.

YOUR PET'S MARK

The eco-footprints of the family pet each year as calculated by the Vales:

German shepherds: 1.1 hectares, compared with 0.41ha for a large SUV.

Cats: 0.15ha (slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf). Hamsters: 0.014ha (two of them equate to a medium-sized plasma TV).

Goldfish: 0.00034ha (an eco-finprint equal to two cellphones).

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/national/2987821/Save-the-planet-eat-a-dog

They All Look Alike To MSNBC

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:55:58 PDT

http://www.breitbart.tv/msnbc-anchor-introduces-jesse-jackson-as-al-sharpton/

What The Limbaugh Quote Hoax Really Tells Us

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:10:18 PDT

Listening to the contemporary American left’s views of the rest of us is increasingly like listening to a paranoid schizophrenic slip farther into delusions that they are surrounded by malevolent people. Just as we have to worry that the schizophrenic might act on their delusional beliefs and strike out violently against the evils they imagine, we have to be increasingly worried that leftists will strike out against the rest of us based on their delusional fantasies about what we non-leftists believe.

And make no mistake about it, leftists do harbor dark delusions about non-leftists. The fact that so many leftists fell completely for the Limbaugh quote hoax proves it.

The first rule of a good con or hoax is to appeal to the preconceptions and prejudices of the mark. The scammer weaves a story shot through with details that the scammer knows the mark already believes to be true. Conversely, this means that you can determine what a mark actually believes by observing what cons and hoaxes they fall for.

Watching so many serious journalists and leftist political figures fall for the fake Rush Limbaugh quotes tells us something very frightening about what leftists believe true about non-leftist America. I say, “frightening,” because we evaluate the level of threat that others pose based on our understanding of the amorality of their beliefs. Then we rationalize the harshness of the methods we are willing to employ against them based on our threat assessment. We are much more willing to use draconian methods against people we view as extremely evil than we are against people we judge less evil. As a nation, we were willing to employ much more draconian methods to defeat fascism than we employed to fight anyone else. The same basic principle applies to our internal conflicts as well. The more extreme and dangerous we view our political and social opponents as being, the more tolerant we become of extreme measures to oppose them.

Given this, what does it portend for American non-leftists that a wide and powerful swath of the American left apparently believes it quite credible that a major media figure with an audience in the tens of millions looks back fondly on slavery and approves of political assassination? What draconian methods could those leftists rationalize using if they really believe they are fighting people with such values?

As I have written before, immersion in fantasy is a defining aspect of leftism. As they move progressively towards the left pole of the political spectrum, the realities become more and more immersive while becoming more and more detached from reality. At the far end of the spectrum, the leftists become delusional to the point they believe they are trapped in a gotterdammerung struggle of good versus evil that justifies any action they might take in fighting that struggle. When dangerous fantasies, once the providence of the 5% most radical left, become accepted as true in the 40% just to the left of center, the rest of us are in great danger.

So we have to ask: Just how seriously deluded is the mainstream American left that they believed it credible that Limbaugh actually said the things attributed to him in the fake quotes?

Let’s be clear about what they believed Limbaugh actually said:

I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.

How can anyone believe that a mainstream American figure would believe such things, much less speak them aloud? As a practical matter, how do they imagine that a celebrity such as Limbaugh, who is one of the most recorded people in America, managed to keep these quotes hidden for so long? Why isn’t there audio or video of him making these or similar statements? How has he managed to be on the air for 20+ years without making more than these two slips?

Only someone seriously immersed in a deep fantasy about Limbaugh’s beliefs would swallow such quotes without checking them or thinking about the practical possibility of Limbaugh making such statements without every person in the world knowing about it within the hour. More troubling, not only would they have to believe that Limbaugh thinks that way but that his audience does as well.

They fell for the hoax because their fantasy about the evil of non-leftists tells them that most non-leftists think this way. They didn’t need to check on the provenance of the quotes any more than the rest of us need to check an assertion that the sun came up in the East this morning. It was just that obvious to them.

So, we come back to the main question: What methods could these deluded leftists justify using against the rest of us if they really believe we hold such beliefs and values as are inherent in the fake quotes? What couldn’t they justify doing to drive such people from politics or even the nation itself? We even have to ask, what level of violence could they justify using against us?

This isn’t about Limbaugh. They clearly view Limbaugh as just the most visible manifestation of tens of millions of Americans pining for the good old days of slavery. Make no mistake. They aren’t just targeting Limbaugh as someone so evil that they can justify any extremity in fighting him.

They are targeting the rest of us as well.

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/9801.html

Backers of Child Molester Give $34K to Obama, DNC

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:31:13 PDT

Obviously, they support those who share their own beliefs.

Movie industry types calling for the release of director Roman Polanski last year gave $34,000 to Obama's presidential campaign and the Democratic Party, FEC records show.

Polanski's arrest late last month by Swiss authorities in connection with a three-decade-old California underage sex case has sparked a vigorous national debate about sex, justice and extradition that - thus far - has yet to draw in the Obama administration.

But the most generous Democratic donor of the vocal pro-Polanski contingent, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, in an open letter called on "every US filmmaker to lobby against any move to bring Polanski back to the US, where he could face life in jail."

Weinstein last year gave $28,500 to the DNC and its White House Victory Fund, though he didn't contribute directly to Obama. In fact, he has been a big supporter of Obama's presidential rival-turned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose campaigns and committees have received $88,000 from Weinstein over the years.

Meanwhile, among the signatories of a movie-industry petition calling for "the immediate release of Roman Polanski," were a half-dozen Obama supporters who gave $15,500 to his presidential campaign:

Ariel Dorfman: $4,100

Martin Scorsese: $3,300

Larry Levine: $2,500

Darren Aronofsky: $2,300

Brett Ratner: $2,300

Richard Pena: $1,000

The petition, circulated by a French film group, isn't explicitly addressed to the U.S. government, but it does single out a function for "French artists and intellectuals" at the U.S. Embassy in France at which an embassy official spoke "in perfect French" about "the Franco-American friendship and recommended the development of cultural relations between our two countries."

"If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski," the petition reads.

http://www.politico.com/click/stories/0910/polanski_backers_gave_34k_to_obama_dnc.html

MMM...MMM...MM...Barack Hussein Obama...MMM...MMM...MM

Democrat Controlled Government + Lobbyists = Olympic Scale Corruption

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:30:09 PDT

You know it has got to be bad when ultra-leftwing Frank Rich and the New York Times can no longer turn a blind eye to it.

IN the annals of American excess, there often arrives a moment when those with too much money, too much clout and too much hubris just can’t stop themselves from tempting the fates. They throw an over-the-top party in public, or parade their wealth and power before the press, and the next thing you know their world, and sometimes ours, has crashed.

It’s in this context that you have to wonder what some of the Obama era’s most moneyed and White House-connected lobbyists were thinking as they preened before a Washington Post reporter recently for twolengthy articles. We’re not even nine months into the new administration, yet these swaggering, utterly un-self-aware influence peddlers seem determined to prove that nothing except the party affiliations has changed in the Beltway’s pay-for-play culture since Tom DeLay. If these lobbyists were stocks, I’d short them.

One of the articles focused on Heather Podesta — “The It Girl of a New Generation of Lobbyists” — who lobbies for health care players like Eli Lilly, HealthSouth and Cigna. Podesta is half of what The Post has called a “mega-lobbying” couple. Her husband, with his own separate (and larger) lobbying shop, is Tony Podesta, the brother of John Podesta, the Clinton White House chief of staff who ran the Obama transition. Back in November, Tony Podesta told The Times that only “very unsophisticated” clients would hire his firm because of his brother’s role in assembling the new administration. That encyclopedic and ever-expanding list of “unsophisticated” clients includes Amgen and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — and that’s just among the A’s. His business was up 57 percent from last year in the first six months of 2009. Heather Podesta’s was up 65 percent.

Read the whole thing here.

In his inaugural address, Obama said he would, “restore the vital trust between people and their government.”

But he has been too busy don't you know. What with jetting off to Copenhagen to try and repay his Chicago handlers, beer and nuts with professor Gates and that racist policeman, and his Letterman appearances.

A Moment of Clarity from your President on his Accomplishments

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:51:52 PDT

I gotta admit that I like him when he is being honest.

Obama Appointee Lauded NAMBLA Figure

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:57:53 PDT

Obama appointee lauded NAMBLA figure

By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
10/01/09 12:40 PM EDT

Kevin Jennings, President Obama's Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug FreeSchools at the U.S. Department of Education, is in hot water this week for having failed to report that a 15-year-old sophomore student in his school had told him of having sex with an older man.

But failure to report what appeared to be a case of statuatory rape of a child may be the least of Jennings' worries. Lori Roman of Regular Folks United points to statements by Jennings a decade or more ago when he praised Harry Hay of the North American Association for Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.

Roman provides damning details and links here. She also notes that Jennings wrote the forward "to a book called Queering Elementary Education. And another fellow you may have heard of wrote one of the endorsements on the book jacket—Bill Ayers." Ayers, of course, is the Weather Underground bomber from the 1960s who is just an "acquaintance" of Obama.

Every presidential administration ends up with scandals inspired by controversial appointees, but typically those tend to revolve around financial improprieties, conflicts of interest, or some other form of white-collar misconduct. For Obama, the scandals seem to be develping in a pattern of disclosures revolving around radical left ideology that raises questions about their fitness for any job in government.

And that in turn raises the inevitable question: Is nobody minding the White House personnel store?

UPDATE: Who was Harry Hay?

Folks at Media Matters are agitated by the above post and others pointing out Jennings' praise of Harry Hay and the latter's link to NAMBLA. Hay was not an employee or official of NAMBLA, but was during his later years, according to his entry on Wikipedia, a frequent defender of the group, including this 1983 statement: "[I]f the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world."

MM has a point - Jennings praise of Hay was not specifically in the context of the latter's support of NAMBLA. Readers will decide for themselves whether it is appropriate for an individual who publicly praised an advocate of pedophilia to be appointed Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education for Safe and Drug-Free Schools