Archive for March, 2009
What's Hillary Clinton Doing Today? March 23rd
11am – Bilateral with The Honorable Ojo Maduekwe, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
Go, Hillary, Go!
Mount Redoubt in Alaska is erupting
Mount Redoubt in Alaska is erupting today.
Governor Sarah Palin well-prepared Alaskans for this event, so no lives are in danger.
It’s still fascinating to have a volcano erupting somewhere in the United States today. Ever since the end of August last year when Governor Palin was announced as the VP candidate, we’ve been incredibly interested in all things Alaskan — a state we never thought much about before.
But, just imagine if we could harness the geothermal power of Alaska’s volcanoes in addition to the vast oil reserves in many parts of the state.
When we see Mount Redoubt erupting today, we don’t think “Danger”, but see “Opportunity”.
What an amazing place, with so much energy potential.
Check out part of Governor Palin’s plan to harness it.
Day Four: Obama-Special Olympics Bowl Off Challenge Watch
Last Friday, Special Olympian Kolan McConiughey challenged Obama to a Bowl-Off in response to the ridicule Obama heaped on the Special Olympics last Thursday.
The White House refused comment on the challenge before Obama left for yet another long weekend excusion to Camp David.
Today, presumably the White House is back to work this Monday morning.
It’s a good time to give your Senators and Representatives a call and let them know how much you’d like to see Obama accept Kolan McConiughey’s challenge. Additionally, the Special Olympics has suggested Obama hire at least one Special Olympian to work in the White House, making amends for his insensitivity in Hollywood last week, and showing America that Special Olympians can do absolutely anything if given the chance.
Please call Congress today and ask them why the White House won’t invite Kolan McConiughey for a Bowl-Off, and why the White House won’t hire a Special Olympian to make amends for Obama’s ignorant callousness on Jay Leno.
Senate Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
House Switchboard: (202) 225-3121
White House Switchboard: (202) 456-1414
UPDATE: We still believe Maria Shriver is key to making this Bowl-Off happen. She’s close to Obama, and her father was one of the Special Olympics founders. She, as well as Sarah Palin, released statements on Friday calling Obama’s remarks on Leno ignorant and insensitive.
We need a contact number and fax for Maria Shriver.
We also need contact numbers and faxes for Jay Leno at The Tonight Show, NBC, and The Tonight Show’s main sponsors. Our thinking is that the sponsors could put pressure on NBC and Leno to use their connections with the White House to make the Bowl-Off happen, perhaps as a Leno-hosted fundraiser for the Special Olympics.
Can someone find good contact numbers for:
Maria Shriver =
Jay Leno =
NBC =
Tonight Show Sponsors =
Monday Open Thread
What’s on your mind this Monday?
After last week, where Tim Geithner’s lies to the American people over AIG and Obama’s insult of the Special Olympics dominated the headlines, what do you think the MSM narrative will be this week?
Supposedly, the White House is going to try to rehabilitate Geithner with a round of media pressers and various appearances that are supposed to reboot the Treasury Secretary’s battered image.
We don’t believe that’s even possible, and that Geithner will hang on at the Treasury for a while, but should be out of a job sometime this summer. One more big negative story linked to the Treasury and Geithner’s going to be under the bus with Richardson, Daschle, and all the others in Obama’s wake.
Something also tells us this week’s going to bring scrutiny to Kathleen Sebelius too.
What do you think will make news this week?
UPDATE: As always, we’re also watching what’s cooking with the Chicago Olympics bid. Here’s a piece in today’s Tribune dealing with the building resistance to the Olympics bid. In short, we in Chicago realize how much graft and corruption will go into the Olympics, and how devastated Chicago will be economically after this massive boondoggle.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky was busy lying some more this weekend
Rep. Jan Schakowsky is the wife of convicted felon Robert Creamer, notorious Chicagoland check-kiter (whose crime spree involved bank and charitable fraud, feloniously writing bad checks on accounts in one bank, for deposit into accounts in another bank, and withdrawal from a third bank before anyone could figure out there was no real money in the accounts to move around like that).
This weekend, Schakowsky told POLITICO she’s not yet decided on whether or not she’ll run for the US Senate in 2010, which is a bold-faced lie, as everyone in Chicago knows.
Schakowsky is already raising money for a Senate run, where she and Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (scion of the mob-backing, Broadway Bank-owning Giannoulias Family, and good personal friend and basketball buddy of Obama) are just two of the Democrats who plan on challenging Senator Roland Burris in next year’s primary.
Senator Burris is a good and decent man whom we support whole-heartedly. Obama supporters like Schakowsky continue to malign Burris, because Giannoulias is whom Obama wants in that Senate seat (Giannoulias is the Chicago machine candidate).
Schakowsky is just delusional if she thinks she will win the primary, and stupid if she thinks anyone buys the lies she tells in POLITICO about not knowing whether or not she is running for the seat. Only in Illinois could the wife of a shameless and unrepentant convicted felon even hold a seat in Congress, let alone plot a path to the United States Senate. But, delusional and stupid is a fairly accurate way to describe Schakowksy (along with rude and crass).
One of the weirdest Kabuki acts in Illinois these days is played by Democrats who pretend they are not plotting and scheming against Senator Burris
It’s exhausting.
Is Obama deliberately trying to insult our foreign allies?
Jacques Chirac is no longer the president of France.
Nicholas Sarkozy is the president of France.
Nicholas Sarkozy didn’t get a nice letter from Obama telling him how much Obama is looking forward to working with Sarkozy over the next four years.
The French are taking this as a major snub, since they assume Obama realizes Sarkozy is the president of France, and wrote to Sarkozy’s predecessor purposefully, to make some sort of political statement.
Why do these sorts of things keep happening in the Obama White House?
Once again, we note the difference in treatment Obama and George W. Bush would receive with these sorts of gaffes.
If Bush had snubbed and slighted Gordon Brown on his US visit, the press would have excoriated Bush (particularly if Bush had given a visiting Prime Minister DVDs and toy helicopters, not long after pointedy returning a bust of Winston Churchill over British insistence the US keep it as a symbol of friendship). If Dubya had sent Chirac a letter like Obama’s, the press would switch into 24/7 ridicule mode, eviscerating Bush’s intelligence for not realizing who the current president of France is. And we all know the hue and cry that would have erupted should Bush have ever gone on the Tonight Show and made fun of the Special Olympics (including awkwardly joking about “waterheads” bumping into things around the White House).
It’s truly stunning how differently these two men are treated by the MSM.
NOTE: There are some trolls out there who try to claim the State Department is involved in these gaffes Obama makes with foreign leaders on what seems to be a daily basis. The State Department has nothing to do with this — this letter to Chirac came straight from the Oval Office, handled exclusively by the White House staff, with no stop at Foggy Bottom on its way to France. Obama’s White House staff selected the gifts for Gordon Brown (and purchased them at Best Buy and the White House gift shop). Obama personally refused the Winston Churchill bust and ordered its return to Britain.
Obama apologists are certainly a well-paid and creative lot, and this weekend’s Project Pledge Canvass illustrates how effectively their marching orders are disseminated, but you can’t try to blame the State Department for things the White House is doing without raising the question of who’s really the President?
If the trolls claim Hillary Clinton is doing these things, such as sending embarrassing letters to France in Obama’s name, or humiliating the British by treating the Prime Minister so badly, then who exactly is in control in that Oval Office?
Isn’t Obama running this show?
Didn’t he, as he likes to point out, “win”?
Whatever happened to that "new kind of politics" stuff?
So, Obama has been attacking former Vice President Cheney in recent days, including his appearance on 60 Minutes to air tonight.
This, after the current President waged a high-profile, adolescent feud with radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
Whatever happend to all of that “new kind of politics” stuff Obama promised on the campaign trail?
Obama has a real storm brewing that the White House is wholly unaware of. Shockingly, people in Chicago, including our local media here, are picking up on ths: he is not behaving presidential, and people are responding to that.
The appearances on Jay Leno, as if he was promoting a new movie that he’s in. Gracing the cover of magazines like Men’s Health, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, and others with little to do with government or politics: just like a pop star. Setting up, and relishing, petty feuds far beneathe the office of the President, just like the sort of thing Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and other starlets do.
Attacking Dick Cheney is an especially stupid thing to do, particularly in terms of Guantanamo Bay and its detainees, many of whom Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder plans to release on US soil (the ones who aren’t being repatriated to Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other countries that will have these terrorists back on the street in less than a year).
Obama doesn’t get it.
The people in Guantanamo are people who want to kill Americans. They cannot be rehabilitated. They will never see the error of their ways and become prodcutive members of society. For as long as they live, they will plot and scheme to attack the United States. That’s why they are in Guantanamo Bay.
The Bush Administration made a lot of mistakes, as even Republicans note. But Bush, and Vice President Cheney, certainly understood what we are up against. They never mollycoddled anyone. They didn’t release terrorists back onto the streets once caught.
There wasn’t another attack on US soil since 9/11.
Something tells us that’s not a coincidence.
It feels like Obama’s naivety and his overexposed pop star persona are both on a collision courses for reality in terms of international terrorism. In Chicago, the local media has been running TV spots asking people if Obama is more celebrity than president. On some of our local talk shows, people say that he feels more like a movie star than a world leader. It’s hard to take him seriously sometimes.
Little things contribute to that, like not wearing a tie and jacket in the Oval Office, one place on Earth where there should never be a casual Friday. More substantive things like Obama’s petty criticisms of the former administration also undermine his gravitas as President. That sort of thing just seems very much beneathe the office — and it’s the kind of thing that’s ultimately going to make Obama a national joke, in the same way Jimmy Carter became a joke that emboldened enemies of the United States to challenge and attack us abroad.
Sunday Open Thread
You know what to do.
HILLARIOUS. White House vegetable garden will indeed have plenty of arugula.
Either some snarky horticulturist has a sense of humor, or amnesiacs are planting the new White House vegetable garden, but either way the inclusion of arugula amongst the plantings is HILLARIOUS.
The new 1,100 foot “Victory Garden”, the planting of which began yesterday, will also include 54 other kinds of vegetables, from succulent spinach to colorful peppers, with juicy berries, herbs, corn as high as TeleprompTers and two honey hives as well (to be tended by a White House carpenter already on staff, who happens to also be a beekeeper because, really, who isn’t).
The Victory Garden will be 100% organic — using organic plantings, fertilizers, and insect repellents.
It will not, by any stretch of the imagination, be the first garden of its kind, or the first use of organic techniques at the White House, no matter what the MSM tries to claim regarding this story.
John Adams planted the first garden at the White House. Woodrow Wilson brought sheep in to naturally mow and fertilize the lawn when the country needed to conserve resources for WWI. Eleanor Roosevelt, during WWII, planted a Victory Garden of her own at the White House to inspire millions of Americans to do the same at home. Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton planted a rooftop garden on top the White House, a decade before such gardens became fashionable in places like here in Chicago.
We love Alice Waters, who inspired Michelle Obama to take this project on, and love gardening in general. But, what we’d REALLY love to see, in addition to the school children who’ve been invited to help work in the White House vegetable garden, would be to see the Obamas make some amends for the insult delivered to Americans with special needs this week on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Invite Special Olympians to help with the garden too. Make them a part of this White House. Show that the president can not just make fun of people with special needs, but also grant them a wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime chance to be part of something really and truly cool: to help tend the White House garden.
If he can mock these people on talk shows, it would be wonderful if he and his wife could give them something special and make them part of this exciting new White House adventure.
Maybe while tending to all the arugula plantings, Special Olympians could sew some seeds of understanding in a president who, thus far, seems utterly tonedeaf and clueless when it comes to people with special needs.
Saturday Open Thread
What’s on your mind today?
What are you up to in your part of the country?
What stories are you tracking today?
