Rag Hand

President Obama used carefully orchestrated “town hall meetings” to build on his cult of personality and to give the illusion of support by “randomly selected,” everyday people, for his policies.

Washington Post – President Obama offered a wonkish defense of his embattled health-care reform effort during an hour-long town hall meeting in Northern Virginia yesterday that featured seven questions, including one sent via Twitter and several from a handpicked audience of supporters.

In the stage-managed event, questions for Obama came from a live audience selected by the White House and the college, and from Internet questions chosen by the administration’s new-media team. Of the seven questions the president answered, four were selected by his staff from videos submitted to the White House Web site or from those responding to a request for “tweets.”

The president called randomly on three audience members. All turned out to be members of groups with close ties to his administration: the Service Employees International Union, Health Care for America Now, and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee. White House officials said that was a coincidence.

They call it a “coincidence,” I’m more inclined to go with “selective door policy.”

Daniel Inouye denies any involvement in a call from one of his staffers to see if the bank he founded was going to get the bailout money they applied for.

According to Inouye’s office, a legislative assistant placed a call last fall to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the bank’s regulator, to ask whether the agency had received the bank’s application for TARP money.

The inquiry by Inouye’s office was first reported Tuesday by the Washington Post and ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces public-interest investigative journalism.

In a statement, Inouye said his aide simply left a voice message with the FDIC and did not speak to anyone at the agency.

“This single phone call was the entire extent of my staff’s contact with regard to Central Pacific Bank, to any outside agency,” Inouye’s statement said. “Neither I nor my staff took any actions that would undermine the independence of those procedures.”

Inouye’s office said an FDIC official called back days later and left a voice message saying the application was still under review.

The bank announced in December that its application for $135 million in TARP funds had been approved.

“We did not ask for any preferential treatment in this process,” bank spokesman Andrew Rosen said. He said the bank briefed Hawaii’s congressional delegation about its application “as a normal course of business.”

Riiiiiggggght, and a call from a guy named Rohm couldn’t possible have anything to do with the wishes of the president.

This is part of the stock in trade of politics. –The proper term for it is “plausible deniability.” –Nothing changes.

This won’t last long with a professional liberal like Sotomayor on the court. She has shown that she will rule in favor of minorities regardless of any evidence of reverse discrimination.

WASHINGTON Post — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide, potentially limiting the circumstances in which employers can be held liable for decisions when there is no evidence of intentional discrimination against minorities.

This is a complicated issue, but the fact that the test was thrown out just because too many white skinned and not enough brown or black skinned applicants managed to pass makes it discrimination based on race.

The city’s backing down from legitimate results because of potential lawsuits not only shows cowardice on their part, it serves to demonstrate just how badly broken the system is.

The object of civil rights legislation was to even the playing field, not to give every goal to somebody based solely on the amount of melanin in their skin.

Washington Post – By Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn ProPublica and Washington Post Staff Writer – Saturday, June 27, 2009
Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that an order, which would bypass Congress, could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that there is no executive order and that the administration has not decided whether to issue one. But one administration official suggested that the White House is already trying to build support for an order.

This is just the traditional Washington DC dog and pony show.

The president wants this power so, first they leak something, then they almost but not quite deny it, and then they wait and see how congress and the general public react.

And if it looks like he’s not going to get what he wants, I guarantee President Obama will play the same national security and terrorist scare cards that got Bush what he wanted.
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They say that there are as many as 90 prisoners that cannot be tried or freed. Some because of national security issues and some because information was gathered via of “harsh interrogation techniques.”

The solution is simple but will never be used because it would undermine the president’s power to incarcerate someone forever without benefit of a trial.

Instead of keeping these people in a cage forever; bring those that can be tried to trial, free everyone that cannot be tried because of torture or lack of evidence, and since the Whitehouse is using the “laws of war” as the reasoning behind all this, bring the national security problems in front of a military tribunal and stamp everything “top secret.”

No matter how this mess is handled, in the long run nothing will change. The Government “of the people…” will continue to treat the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as mere guidelines, the President will keep his power, the various police/security agencies will continue to gain power, our freedoms will continue to erode in the name of “national security”, we will remain no safer than we were before.

There are two things that are making headlines over and over again that don’t make a lot of sense to me.
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Obama and the fly. (Cute but wearing thin fast.)
President Obama slapped a fly on national television. –He warned the little blighter. He told it to go away and it refused.

PETA reacted by saying he did wrong. And you should never kill a fly. They sent him some sort of catching device to use in the future.

PETA also said that he wasn’t the Buddha.

That’s fine with me, I didn’t vote for the Buddha.
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Iranian vote fraud: (Newsworthy yes. But is it worth a headline every single day?)

That it was a fraud is without doubt. How else do you count millions of votes by hand in a matter of hours and why didn’t the percentages vary during the process?

Having said that I would pose a question: How would we react if, no matter how crooked the election, another country tried to force us to change the results?

It’s their country, it’s their problem, all direct interference of any kind would do is turn our allies against us.

Besides, does anyone really think that Iran’s Supreme Leader gives a rat’s ass what a bunch of meddling infidels think?

I found this explanation of what’s wrong with California’s budget in the Mercury News and decided the basic information applies to all state budgets.

Mike Zapler – Mercury News Sacramento Bureau
California Budget 101: Making sense of the state’s financial meltdown

Here we go again.

When it comes to the state budget, the only thing that seems to change is the number of billions by which it’s out of balance. A year ago, state officials had to plug an unthinkable $15 billion. A few months later, as the economy worsened, they were faced with an insurmountable $40 billion.

There is a flash rollover at the bottom of the article explaining things like “How did we get into this mess?” –Simple they spent every dime they took in.

There are answers like:
Cut legislators’ salaries –a drop in the bucket. –Doesn’t anyone else feel that the people who got us into this mess should be held responsible?

Temporarily cut teacher’s pay –They are regulated by contract with individual school districts not the state. –So? Impose a temporary cut in the school districts’ budgets.

Stop services to illegals –Figuring out who is illegal is too difficult. –Translation: The Hispanic community is too well organized and the illegals provide too much cheap labor for politicians to want to fuck with them.

This article does give a reasonable overview of the budget problem, but the answers are too PC for my tastes.

Now for a very non-pc opinion:
Have you seen the map that shows a pre-1840’s US? Officials in Mexico have been encouraging people to believe that they are somehow entitled to this land. –I’ll go along with them the day they decide to give the rest back to the Aztecs.

The reason for their attitude is self evident. –The resource rich country of Mexico is so badly run that a large portion of the population can’t even support their families. But if they come to the US they can send money home, so the elitist assholes that run things will never have to pay people a living wage.

Guess what guys. –Our elitist assholes have broken this country so badly that there is almost no work and damned little left for your people to send home.

Have you noticed that the elitist assholes, on all sides of all borders, who created this rolling cluster fuck still get their bonuses and still make more money than God?

The real golden rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

Raghand: Politically incorrect and proud of it.