Welcome one and all to the most intense nightly read on the web…. The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble.
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- IT’S THE BOMB, BRO: The big news of last evening, of course, was the incendiary device on four wheels parked in the middle of New York’s Times Square. [2] The news stations certainly covered it well enough, but there hasn’t been any response has the New York governor’s office about it that been worthwhile, as of this writing. I can’t help but wonder if the reason is that they can’t figure out how to spin it to their advantage.
- SHOULD WE CALL HIM “SLICK BARRY”? The President today was to have headed for the gulf coast. Frankly, there’s only one reason that I can think of that he would go there. It is partially described in the statement from the White House which describe the trip is having “a very small footprint “. Make no mistake, here. We Americans are being manipulated the once again when it comes to energy. For the last couple of weeks now, we have heard noises from the far left as regards the explosion and sinking of an oil rig in the gulf, and the supposedly ever expanding damage being done by the resulting oil spill. It is no accident in my view that this occurrence should come into the news so very quickly after the White House made and over gesture , and frankly an empty one, in saying that we should expand our offshore oil exploration. Does anyone reading this not understand the timing involved here? Obama can scream all he wants about how we’re going to increase our oil production from offshore drilling, but his own people call in a liar. David Axelrod for example who spoke on Good Morning America on Friday last [3], saying that there would be no expansion of offshore drilling until such time as a thorough investigation of what happened in the gulf…. blah, blah, blah. I’m actually writing this fairly early on Monday morning, so I have no idea what the president’s going to say once he gets there. Not precisely, anyway. Maybe he’s going down there to do a Moses and part the oil slick with a wave of his magic staff. But whatever… I will guarantee you that we will see some kind of feint at a policy change, that will keep his Enviro-whackjob base happy, while not pissing off the majority of Americans who are already paying too much for energy any further . You want a real indication of where the president stands on energy? Think about it now; Does anybody remember when president Bush was in office in oil prices were going up? There was all kinds of blame heaped on the White House from the left, and from the press (but I repeat myself ) for that price rise. Have you seen the price at the pump lately? Where’s the outrage in the press now? Heck, have they even mentioned the price increases?
- EMERGENCY RESPONSE: I remember, not so very long ago, back when President Bush was in the White House As regards the lack of emergency preparedness vis’ a vie’ Katrina. The current situation and the press is reaction to it is remarkably different. We have two blatant instances of a lack of correct response for emergency situations. One the oil spill in the gulf, and the other more recent affair , the mobile bomb in Times Square. The administration has managed to show itself as totally incompetent to the task of emergency response. Wasn’t that exactly the situation Candidate Obama promised we wouldn’t see in his administration? Is this Obama’s Katrina?
- GOLDMAN, ET AL: The evidence surrounding the Goldman Sachs affair is that there’s something more going on here than we are told. Certainly, the shock involved in that investment bankers want to make money, is something of a laugher. Just as certainly, it shows the socialistic tendencies of the current occupant of the White House a and that of the majority of Congress at this point. Some of their behavior seems to point in the direction of manipulation, as well. And let’s please consider the points brought up by the lovely and forever talented Michelle Malken, on the matter. In part: [4]
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- While irony-challenged Democratic candidates such as mob-linked banker Alexi Giannoulias in Illinois (who hopes to fill Obama’s old Senate seat) call on Republicans to return their fat-cat Goldman Sachs donations, the Democrats are silent on the $994,795 in Goldman Sachs campaign cash [6] that Obama bagged. The class-warfare Dems are also mum on all the president’s Goldman Sachs men sitting in the catbird seat:</li><li>Goldman Sachs partner Gary Gensler is Obama’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission [6] head. He was confirmed despite heated congressional grilling over his role, as Reuters described it, “as a high-level Treasury official in a 2000 law that exempted the $58 trillion credit default swap market from oversight. The financial instruments have been blamed for amplifying global financial turmoil.” Gensler said he was sorry — hey, it worked for tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner — and was quickly installed to guard the henhouse.
- Goldman Sachs kept White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on a $3,000 monthly retainer while he worked as Clinton’s chief fundraiser, as first reported by Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney. The financial titans threw in another $50,000 to become the Clinton primary campaign’s top funder. Emanuel received nearly $80,000 in cash from Goldman Sachs during his four terms in Congress — investments that have reaped untold rewards, as Emanuel assumed a leading role championing the trillion-dollar TARP banking-bailout law.
There’s far more in Michelle’s article of course and I urge you to go and read.
The fact of the matter is The Democrats are using Goldman Sachs as a scapegoat for the economic failure caused by trying to secure home loans for people that couldn’t afford them, who happened to be the smack dab in the middle of the Democrat voter core. Goldman Sachs, for their part, seem to be allowing themselves to be led to the “slaughter”. Whether this is willingly or unwillingly I don’t know. but you know something less than honest is going on when Carl Levin is the ringmaster at the congressional circus hearings. Limbaugh has a thought worth considering [7] here as well:
[8]Rush Limbaugh
So is Bam throwing Goldman under the bus here? I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and find out. But, you know, Blankfein went up there, bent over, grabbed the ankles, said whatever you want, we’ll pay the fine, we agree with your financial regulatory reform, got out of there thinking, “Ah, dodged a bullet here,” and the next day, criminal investigation is announced into Goldman Sachs. It’s like I said, what’s going to happen here at the end of the day, a huge fine, some of these execs will leave by design, form their own hedge funds and earn 25 or $30 billion a year. Some might end up in the administration, you never know. All of this to create the image that it is Wall Street and the rich — like I said yesterday, Obama is dividing this country two ways. Dividing it on class envy, the haves and have-nots, and dividing it on race. Hitler only did one way, the Soviet communists only did one way, Obama is combining these two techniques, and you see it right before your very eyes.
As I said.. we’re being manipulated, here. And as I’ve said in the past, there are no constitutional guarantees with a socialist /populist government running the show.
- IT AIN’T PRETTY BUT IT WORKS: Glenn Reynolds thinks the Tea Party movement likely to have unglamorous but effective future.
I think he’s right. - BIRTHDAY: Belated Birthday wishes to Talkshow host Roger Hedgecock, who had one over the weekend.
