Obama: ‘She insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt’
By Byron York Chief Political Correspondent Washington Examiner
Yes, those are the words of the president, last night at the Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Washington.
After listing his administration’s accomplishments and vowing that “our most urgent task is job creation,” Obama pledged to keep fighting for a national health care system. “We knew this was hard,” Obama said. And then he described a letter he received from a campaign worker who suffered from breast cancer and has since died:
I got a letter — I got a note today from one of my staff — they forwarded it to me — from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer. She didn’t have insurance. She couldn’t afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years. All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.
Many observers have noted that the president often seems extraordinarily self-referential. It’s all about him, they say. But even those critics might be a little taken aback by the “buried in an Obama t-shirt” remark. Is it really that much about him?
Others ask how some of Obama’s statements would have been covered had George W. Bush made them — for example, if Bush had pronounced “corpsman” as “corpse-man” (as Obama did twice at the National Prayer Breakfast). Had Bush mispronounced the word so badly — and he did say some weird things — it’s likely many commentators would have rushed to fit it into their Bush-is-stupid narrative.
Now, it’s Obama who’s sounding strange. And even putting aside the “corpsman” gaffe, what does the president’s telling of the “buried in an Obama t-shirt” anecdote tell us about him? (By the way, this is not about the woman and her choice — people do all sorts of things, and we respect the decisions they make — but about the president’s choosing to tell the story himself.)
See: Video
The statement comes at 8:25 in the video below. You can see that the crowd laughed after the “t-shirt” comment — perhaps because they thought it was funny or perhaps because it made them a bit uneasy. In any event, Obama was serious.
The Scott Lee Cohen Trainwreck
By Josh Kalven – Progressive Illinois
More and more details keep emerging about embattled Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Scott Lee Cohen. And none of it’s pretty.
In the hours after he suprised political observers and won the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, the local media began unearthing more and more details about Scott Lee Cohen’s sordid past. But in a Thursday media blitz that included interviews with almost every news outlet in Chicago, Cohen dug his heels in, saying that he hadn’t yet been contacted by any party representatives and that he had no intention of backing out of the race.
- The 2.3 million: Cohen, a Chicago pawnbroker, won the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor on Tuesday night after pouring $2.3 million of his own money into his campaign and blanketing the state with mailers and TV ads. Some local politicians, including Alds. Dick Mell (33rd Ward) and Robert Maldonado (26th Ward) even supported his candidacy on their websites.
- The media blackout: As he was launching his campaign in March of last year, he gave an interview to Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown in which pre-emptively disclosed that he had been arrested in 2005 on domestic battery charges involving an ex-girlfriend. In the nine months that followed, no other outlets followed-up on the story, assuming — like Brown — that Cohen had no chance of winning.
- The knife: Only on Wednesday, following Cohen’s victory, did reporters begin uncovering the full background. The Sun-Times reported that the allegations in the 2005 battery case involved him holding a knife to the neck of the then-24-year-old ex-girlfriend.
Continue Reading »
The Reason the Senate is Waiting Until 5:00 PM to Seat Scott Brown
Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will be confirmed by the Senate today. Craig Becker has been SEIU’s Associate General Counsel, working directly with union boss, Andy Stern.
The five-member NLRB supervises union elections, investigates labor practices and, most important, issues rulings that interpret the National Labor Relations Act.
Current law on organizing provides advantages and restrictions for both sides. Employers are required to provide union reps with a list of employees and their addresses. Union organizers can visit employees at home, but companies cannot. Organizers can also make promises to employees (such as obtaining raises), which employers cannot. Companies can argue their position at a work site up to 24 hours before an election, but they are barred from coercing employees. Both sides get a seat at the table during NLRB hearings about the scope of an election or complaints about how it was conducted.
Mr. Becker wants to change the current laws. He believes business owners should have no rights to raise questions on decisions that impact the future success of their own companies.
Most workers don’t want unions. They are well aware of what has happened to the steel, auto and other heavily unionized industries. Obama had to nominate Becker because as Andy Stern said, the union put Obama in office. Will the Senate cow tow to Obama and the union? We’ll see tonight.
From Politico.com:
Dem. Senators Spent Weekend with Bank, Energy, Tobacco Lobbyists
The guest list for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s “winter retreat” at the Ritz Carlton South Beach Resort doesn’t include the price tag for attendance, but the maximum contribution to the committee, typical for such events, is $30,000. There, to participate in “informal conversations” and other meetings Saturday, were senators including DSCC Chairman Robert Menendez; Michigan’s Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow; Bob Casey of Pennsylvania; Claire McCaskill of Missouri; freshmen Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mark Begich of Alaska; and even left-leaning Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Across the table was a who’s who of 108 senior Washington lobbyists, including the top lobbying officials for many of the industries Democrats regularly attack: Represented were the American Bankers Association, the tobaco company Altria, the oil company Marathon, several drug manufacturers, the defense contractor Lockheed, and most of the large independent lobbying firms: Ogilvy, BGR, Quinn Gillespie, Heather Podesta, and Tony Podesta.
The retreat’s guest list is a marked contrast to Menendez’s recent rhetoric, which has echoed the White House denunciation of “special interests” and “fat cats.”
Continue Reading »
Lech Walesa Endorses Adam Andrzejewski
Chicago – Lech Walesa, the former polish president, is endorsing Polish-American Adam Andrzejewski in the Republican race for governor.
“Because he has no baggage. He is open. He can put things in order. Clean house,” said Walesa. He doesn’t depend on anyone and this is his greatness. Nobody gave us a chance to win over the communists. Nobody. And we proved them wrong,”
“We’re gonna defend the taxpayers of Illinois. We’re gonna bring good governance to Springfield. This is a new era of governance that we can work on together,” said Andrzejewski.
3 Top Issues:
1. Making Illinois a magnet for job growth
2. Balancing the budget by cutting spending
3. Ethics reform, specifically making public officials’ sources of income public and banning nepotism in hiring and contracts.
First thing he would do in office:
“Sign an executive order to open up the books, every dime, online, in real time. A second executive order would be to do a forensic audit of the books.”
Straw Donors
A straw donor is a person who illegally uses another person’s money to make a political contribution in their own name. In the United States, making a political contribution in another person’s name is illegal.
Lobbyist Uses Straw Donors
Lobbyists Paul Magliocchetti is a former congressional staffer who worked with Rep. John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat, who sat on the powerful House Appropriations defense subcommittee.
Magliocchetti’s firm, PMA Group, was one of the 10 top-grossing lobbying firms in Washington before it imploded after federal agents raided it and his home in November 2008.
According to The Washington Times: The firm made more than $16.4 million in lobbying income in 2007, according to Senate records, and was the go-to lobbyist for contractors who wanted earmarks – especially from the defense appropriations subcommittee, which Mr. Murtha heads.
The Times’ review of public records found a pattern of donations from unlikely sources that were directed to congressmen Mr. Magliocchetti wanted to support. In some cases, the donors did not appear to have the personal funds necessary to make such substantial donations. In others, the donors had rarely voted or given donations before they started supporting Mr. Magliocchetti’s slate of candidates.
The unlikely donors include Mr. Magliocchetti’s first wife’s parents, two business associates – a golf pro and a wine sommelier who lived near his Florida condo – his children, and his former sister-in-law and her husband, a Virginia police officer.
Read it all here
The Politician
Andrew Young began working for John Edwards during the politicians 1998 Senate campaign. He was Edward’s friend and confidant for more than 10 years. When Edwards was finally exposed by the press as a lying, cheating low-life, Young was no longer of any use to Edwards. His book about his time with John Edwards will be released February 2nd.
From the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire, Louise Radnofsky and Susan Davis review the book:
‘The Politician’ By Andrew Young
If Washington Wire readers are interested in reading Andrew Young’s forthcoming tell-all on his decade behind the scenes with John Edwards, the story heats up on page 154 when Young begins to recount how the 2008 presidential hopeful and former Democratic Party vice presidential nominee was taken down by an extramarital affair and a brazen attempt to hide his daughter’s paternity.
As most readers already know, former Sen. Edwards from North Carolina had an affair with Rielle Hunter while his wife, Elizabeth, was battling cancer and he was plotting a path to the White House. When Hunter, a videographer hired by the Edwards campaign, became pregnant, Edwards persuaded longtime “body man” Young to claim he was the father. Young went into hiding with his wife, their three children — and Hunter. Shortly afterwards, the affair was uncovered by the National Enquirer and eventually the mainstream media.
Young describes his alleged discovery of a compromising videotape of Edwards and a naked, pregnant lover, identified by Young as Hunter. “It was like watching a traffic pileup occur in slow motion — it was repelling but also transfixing,” he writes.
Young, who has severed his ties with the Edwards family, tells his side of the tale in “The Politician: An Insider’s Account of John Edwards’s Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal that Brought Him Down.” The book is set for a Feb. 2 release by St. Martin’s Press. Washington Wire purchased a copy Monday at a Washington, D.C.-area book store.
The UN Wants to Control the Universe
Last July, the National Geographic News had an article APOLLO 11 AT 40: Who Owns the Moon?
Now, forty-one years after Apollo 11, Dennis Hope, an entrepreneur from Nevada says he owns the moon. As the self-appointed head of the Lunar Embassy Corporation, he has sold real estate on the moon and other planets to more than 3.7 million people.
The UN Wants to Control the Universe
In 1980, Hope tried to register his claim to the moon with the United Nations. According to the UN, the moon is unclaimable under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which has so far been ratified by 100 UN member countries, including the United States.
In 1960 the UN established The International Institute of Space Law as part of the United Nation Office for Outer Space Affairs. See their website.
The UN should be the last organization to run things in outer space. They have already proven they are inept and corrupt from the top down. Remember the food for oil program? The rapes by UN troops in DR Congo and Sierra Leone?
Most recently the UN’s handling of the crisis in Haiti is just another indicator of the UN’s ineptness. After the earthquake, the UN, which promotes itself as a humanitarian organization, turned away critically injured Haitians at their hospital. The broken and bleeding people were told the UN hospital was only for UN employees.
Then there’s the ‘Group of 77,’ which is a coalition of developing nations, many which have a history of taking control of their countries through violence and genocide. These are not the people who should be making decisions for the world, let alone the universe.
SEIU Wants to Get It’s Hands on Your 401(k) Plan
An Offer You Can’t Refuse
The Obama administration, with the help of SEIU, is days away from giving us universal healthcare. Now SEIU President, Andy Stearn, wants to get his hands on all the money in your retirement account. Two Obama advisors have devised a plan to help him do just that. Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry say they can help you turn your savings into guaranteed income streams. If that runs out, you can always buy ‘longevity insurance’ for retirees living beyond a certain age.
Everyone with a 401 (k) or IRA account would be forced into a government annuity program – and they want to run that program. That’s a big pile of money. $15.9 trillion dollars. Managing those monthly deposits and getting hefty commissions right off the top adds up to trillions more.
The government money managers want to take all that money and put it in a general pool. Then they plan to redistribute it in a more equitable way. Too bad if your account had $3 million and mine only had $20,000. It’s all about sharing the wealth. If you scrimped and saved and didn’t live lavishly and if I bought new cars every other year, took great vacations and didn’t put much into the account it doesn’t matter.
Yes, the government – with the help of the unions can run your retirement account. That’s assuring. Somehow they believe they are more qualified to pick investments than a private fund manager. How, exactly, they plan to invest the money, they haven’t said. They want the money first.
The new consumer-labor group, “Retirement USA,” – a subsidiary of SEIU, backed by the Pension Rights Center, the Service Employees International Union and the Economic Policy Institute, said the flagging economy has highlighted the inadequacies of 401(k) plans and increased the need for alternatives such as government-managed funds run with professional oversight.
Government success in getting workers to move retirement assets into annuities would prove highly profitable for insurers that sell annuities. The top sellers of individual annuities in the U.S. include AIG, MetLife Inc. (MET), Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. (HIG), Lincoln National Corp. (LNC) and New York Life Insurance Co., according to figures from the American Council of Life Insurers for 2008. The top group-annuity sellers include ING, Prudential Financial, MetLife and Manulife Financial Corp.
Annuity sales to individuals have come under regulatory scrutiny in recent years over the size of sales commissions and whether some varieties are suitable for older investors.Ya’ think?
Let’s see. You give the company your money, then the company charges you a fee to give your money back to you. They figure out how long they think you will live, then divide the money into equal sums to give you each month. If you live longer than the money lasts – then you have the ‘opportunity’ to buy extended coverage. The problem with that is, you’ve used up all your money and can’t afford the extended insurance. They haven’t said what their plan is when that happens.
Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Begins
WASHINGTON (AP) — Challenged by a skeptical special U.S. commission, top Wall Street bankers apologized Wednesday for risky behavior that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But they still declared it seemed appropriate at the time.
The tension at the first hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was evident from the outset.
“People are angry,” commission Chairman Phil Angelides said. Reports of “record profits and bonuses in the wake of receiving trillions of dollars in government assistance while so many families are struggling to stay afloat has only heightened the sense of confusion,” he said.
Testy exchange over ’shorting’ securities
In Wednesday morning’s testiest exchange, commission chairman Phil Angelides, a Democrat and former California state treasurer, pressed Lloyd Blankfein, head of Goldman Sachs, about one particular financial practice.
Why did Goldman take bad financial assets, package them together into bond-like securities, and sell them to investors – while at the same time “shorting” those securities, or making investment bets that they would fail?
Mr. Blankfein said the behavior was improper, but he hedged on fault, saying, “These are professional investors who wanted [these securities]…. I felt good about it.”
Mr. Angelides struck back that Goldman was really double-dealing.
“I’m just going to be blunt with you,” Angelides told him. “It sounds to me a little bit like selling a car with faulty brakes and then buying an insurance policy on the buyer of those cars.”
Blankfein replied: “I do think the behavior is improper. We regret the consequence that people have lost money in it.” Later, though, he defended the firm’s actions as “exercises in risk management.”
In a moment of self-analysis, Blankfein said the world of high-finance simply rationalized its way into risky transactions. Summarizing the thinking in the industry at the time, he said: “Gosh, the world is getting wealthier. Technology has done things. … These businesses are going to do well. You talked yourself into a place of complacency,” he concluded.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission website
On Politics…
Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose
you were a member of Congress...
But I repeat myself.
-Mark Twain
