POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Watch Me Pull a Lawsuit Out of this Twat!

Again?

Guess I don't have any common sense!

Stacy has a pretty politically incorrect take on a 22-year-old woman's rape lawsuit filed against David Copperfield.

I guess I'd heard that Mr. Copperfield had a private Caribbean island, but had forgotten.  Perhaps he can find a role as a James Bond villain.  "I will now make Manhattan disappear, Mr. Bond.  Bwahahahahahaha!"

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Horrendous

David Thompson has the story of Eastern European friends of a Guardian writer who are deeply offended by their racist portrayal as meerkats in a television commercial.

I'm from Africa! Racist!

Of course, imagine you were an Israeli Jew in Sweden.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Marine Puts Boot Into Congresscritter at Town Hall

I would say that he disburdened his mind rather effectively.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Going to Milwaukee

I've got to take Brendan out to Marquette, where he's an incoming freshman.  So, more travels.  Also, I've got to buy him his books.

It's good to have one job, at least, and I've got other irons on the fire, but if anyone finds this site an important part of their web experience--apart from the usual suspects, and you know who you are--I'd be much obliged if you'd hit the tip jar.

As you'll recall, we went to Florida in April (thanks to your aid), Wisconsin in June, to the NIH in Bethesda a couple of weeks ago, not to mention Ohio in May, Boston (twice) and Massachusetts (twice),  and now I've got to drive out to Milwaukee.  So, can't wait to get back and settle into some kind of routine.

I want to thank those who have donated already; personal messages on their way later today.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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VA Awards Itself $24 Million in Bonuses as Vets Wait for Checks

The story is at CNN, so the editors must have missed the obvious fact that somebody---in this case, I---was going to make the obvious case that this is a pretty good example of government-run health care in action.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Solitary Man

Gotta love Wisconsin.

Another criminal mastermind.

Did Emerson think his first wife was a vampire? Surprising numbers of men do. (h/t Sarah W)

Snake on a plane.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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A Worst-Cast Scenario for the Economy

Those of you who read me over at PW may recall that I was predicting that the nation-wide unemployment rate would top out somewhere around 12.5%.  According to this economist, I was being pretty starry eyed.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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White House Confirms GovDelivery as Spammer

The brouhaha over unwanted emails from David Axelrod appears over with the admission on the part of the Obama administration that GovDelivery, an outfit located in Minnesota which does mass electronic mailing for various government entities, was responsible for the spamming.

Fox News ran this as an exclusive, but . . . John Cook at Gawker had the story a week ago. And anyone who had the basics of the story was in a position to confirm the identity of the spammer, if only they'd checked on Twitter:

From @govloop: From my friend David Axelrod and the White House -- http://bit.ly/euRL610:31 AM Aug 13th from bit.ly

smburns
Scott Burns

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Cash for Clunkers Scrambles

Washington Times:

The U.S. Transportation Department, billions of dollars behind in paying "cash-for-clunkers" rebates, has hired private contractors and solicited volunteers from the Federal Aviation Administration and its own executive ranks to work overtime to clear the backlog.

Employees of the FAA's air-traffic-control unit were asked to help, but the Transportation Department stressed Friday that essential safety personnel were not diverted from their duties.

A total of 1,200 workers, including about 300 contractors from Citigroup, the financial services giant, are now working seven days a week to review applications and reimburse auto dealers for rebates advanced to customers, officials said.

The department tripled its program staff to 1,100 last week, and recently added another 100 headquarters employees.

WTF?  Ray LaHood, an Obama crony from Illinois, is in charge of this program.  He's the Secretary of Transportation.

From Wikipedia:

LaHood received a 0% rating from the conservative and anti-earmark Club for Growth 2007 RePORK Card.^[11] He received an 11% rating from Citizens Against Government Waste for 2007 and holds a lifetime 49% rating from the group.^[12]

More:

LaHood's nomination was viewed with alarm among those concerned with climate change and suburban sprawl.^{[14][15][16][17]} His résumé on transport matters is seen as thin by many critics. He did not serve on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee at the time his selection was announced, although he had in the past. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee he did not work on transportation funding.^[18] While picking LaHood drew praise for its bipartisan symbolism there was also a sense that LaHood’s lack of expertise would diminish the department’s role in 2009 major policy debates and leave him as more of a ceremonial figure. James Oberstar, the Democratic Congressman who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is expected to hold more influence and will likely play a stronger leading role. Oberstar praised LaHood’s “temperament” and “managerial talent,” but when asked to cite an issue LaHood championed during his time on the Transportation Committee in the 1990s, Oberstar seemingly drew a blank. “I can’t point to any specific legislation that he authored,” he said. “He was a team player all the way through.” Oberstar said LaHood would play a supporting role on tough policy calls.^[19]

His nomination was confirmed by the Senate by acclamation on January 21, 2009. He is the only Cabinet member who is officially Republican affiliated. ^[20]

So, we have a Transportation Secretary who can't anticipate bottlenecks.  Swell.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Bust-O!

Over at Politico, Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei have up an article entitled, "Obama's Big Bang could go bust." The article details the administration's attempt to ram through a variety of enormous government reforms, quotes Axelrod as saying that the fierce urgencey of now precluded any other approach, and blames some of Obama's troubles on a feckless flyover populace inclined to believe lies about his health care program and other proposed legislation.

Largely missing from the analysis, which is punctuated with a lot of 20/20 hindsight observation, is any appreciation of how Obama and his administration's lack of candor might have affected perceptions of his trustworthiness.  Consider, for example, the promises regarding transparency.  Obama stated that all major pending legislation would be posted in order to give the public a chance to view it for a minimum of five days before he signed it.  This promise--like the promise to conduct health care negotiations live on C-SPAN--has simply not materialized.   Instead, the administration has been conducting its own closed-door negotiations with PhRMA, including a quid pro quo in the form of $150 million in television ad buys to promote the health care agenda, but without tort reform.

Nor do voters trust that he will maintain his campaign pledge not to raise taxes on 95% of Americans.  People see the tremendous and ever-increasing estimates of government debt and understand that the money to pay off the indebtedness is going to come from somewhere.  They see that the stimulus money that was filled with pork and pushed through Congress has largely gone to continue to fund state budgets that were already in trouble, and that there is no money available for another enormous government bail-out.  What they don't see is the production of jobs from all of this largesse, and no quantity of mealy-mouthed claims regarding jobs created or saved changes that.  In fact, Obama seems finally to have given up the formula "created or saved" as a bad job.

People see that the estimated 10-year shortfall is adjusted up from $7 trillion to $9 trillion on a Friday afternoon, and consider that that's not exactly a meaningless increase.  People understand that the CBO doesn't believe that Obama's numbers are correct.  People see how Cash for Clunkers has had pernicious economic side effects, and has benefitted most those other citizens who have least need for aid in purchasing a vehicle.  What they don't see is the credit market rebounding, or foreclosures decreasing.

People see the supercilious, smug arrogance of Robert Gibbs, who seems continually offended that the press should try to do their jobs by getting information from him regarding the amateur hour contradictions that emerge from the mouths and pens of administration spokespeople.  People see an administration happy to convert their money into, not bailouts for the auto industry per se, but a bailout principally for underfunded union pensions.  They see Congresspeople and a President who won't promise to use only the publicly funded health option that they feel is good enough for the citizens of the United States, and whose craven sycophancy toward teachers unions make them wish to take school choice through vouchers away from people to whom it gives options.  And with 30-odd Czars and Czarinas, and 26 staff people devoted to the First Lady for obscure reasons, they see evidence in the most personal terms of the way that Obama intends to grow government for the benefit, first and foremost, of government.

They hear that Obama's Pay Czar will arrogate power to "claw back" executive pay, but that there are no noises being made about any of the beneficiaries of Enron-style accounting at Fannie and Freddie, such as Rahm Emanuel, and that multimillionaire mistress of disaster Jamie Gorelick is comfortably ensconced in a behind-the-scenes negotiating role for the Administration.  They hear the doctors just want to take their tonsils and feet because of the balance sheet, because goodness knows, they're not as intelligent or high-minded as career politicians and bureaucrats.  They hear that Bill Maher thinks he's a genius, though most of them know more about football, baseball, music or electric trains or guns than Bill does about politics, and it's not even their job so to do.

Then they get stonewalled at town halls packed deliberately with union supporters, or find that their Representative has literally decided to phone the meeting in, and they are accused of being astroturfed, even as they watch people from out of state bused in to support the health care fiasco.  They see Lyndon LaRouche wackos carrying Obama Nazi signs characterized as right-wingers.  They hear that their concerns are those of a small and demented minority.  They see videos cropped to make it seem as though they're racists. They are told that their opposition to Obama's policies springs from racism on talk shows and in editorials.  They receive unsolicited emails from Axelrod after being told that their information's not being kept by the White House, and then it's blamed on advocacy groups across a broad political spectrum.  They recall that there were 8 years of BusHitler rhetoric that went unchallenged in the MSM, which suddenly is up in arms about the extraordinary incivility of such comparisons.  They see the Washington Post selling access.  They see newspapers that accuse them of all kinds of mendacity asking for government bailouts.  They see the unconstitutional tinkering with the census and the desire to give billions to ACORN and hear the lies about the numbers of uninsured Americans and the WHO propaganda.  They see the Justice Department drop a prosecution against outrageous voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers, then refuse access to the career lawyers involved.  They're required to show photo IDs to get into town halls by the same Representatives who feel that producing them at the polls is an undue burden.

Oh, yeah, they're angry.  But it's not because they're stupid.  It's because "Trust us; we despise you" isn't really very civil, is it?

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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