Vile Leftwing Professor Pours Hypocritical Hate On Congressman Paul Ryan For Drinking Glass Of Wine

It was just last week that I was able to look at Democrats’ personal behavior toward others and show that they as a species were really quite indistinguishable from cockroaches.

And here we are again, with cockroaches I mean Democrats being cockroaches I mean Democrats.

Rep. Ryan was at a restaurant with a dinner party when out of the blue this vile professor comes over and goes ballistic at his table, creating a giant scene until she was thrown out on her ear for being so rude and hateful.

It would probably be better if the management simply asked people at the door what party they belonged to and blocked Democrats as haters BEFORE they barged in and started scenes, in my view.

The following article asks some pretty wonderful questions of this leftwing self-righteous hypocrite.  I then have more piling on to do when Byron York gets done with this liberal turd:

Paul Ryan accuser won’t talk
By:Byron York | Chief Political Correspondent Follow Him @ByronYork | 07/11/11 8:47 AM.

Susan Feinberg, an associate professor of management and global business at  Rutgers University, caused a stir in the left-wing blogosphere over the weekend  with her account of witnessing House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan  drinking a glass of $350-a-bottle wine at an upscale restaurant near the  Capitol.  (Feinberg, who was at the restaurant, Bistro Bis, with her  husband to celebrate her birthday, knew the wine was pricey because she could  make out the name on the label and checked it on the wine list.)  Feinberg  confronted Ryan, accusing him of hypocrisy for drinking an expensive wine while  advocating reduced spending for Medicare and Medicaid.  But she didn’t stop  there.  Feinberg also suggested Ryan might be guilty of ethics violations,  secretly snapped a photo of him and two dinner companions, and then took the  “story” to Talking Points Memo, the lefty site which ran a high-profile  piece suggesting Ryan might be guilty of some sort of wrongdoing.

Ryan told TPM that his two dinner-mates had ordered the wine, and that he,  Ryan, didn’t know what it cost and drank only one glass.  Ryan’s  explanation was supported by TPM’s account, presumably based on Feinberg’s  recollection, which said that when Feinberg confronted Ryan about the cost of  his wine, “Ryan said only: ‘Is that how much it was?'”

Nevertheless, Feinberg and TPM hinted that Ryan might have violated House  ethics rules by accepting an expensive meal from lobbyists.  But it turned  out that the two men with whom Ryan was dining were, as he said, economists and  not lobbyists.  Feinberg and TPM also suggested that Ryan might have  violated House rules against accepting gifts in general.  But it turned out  that Ryan had paid for his meal and wine — Ryan even showed TPM his copy of the  receipt, which TPM then posted on the web.

Having failed to catch Ryan in an act of wrongdoing, Feinberg and TPM accused  him of hypocrisy. Ryan’s dining companions, one of whom was a wealthy hedge-fund  manager, ordered two bottles of the $350 wine.  Ryan, by his own account,  drank one glass but nevertheless paid for one of the bottles.  But the $700  wine bill outraged Feinberg and her husband, who were at the restaurant to  celebrate her birthday.  “We were just stunned,” she told TPM. “I was an  economist so I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out  that those two bottles of wine was more [sic] than two-income working family  making minimum wage earned in a week.” When she had finished her own meal,  Feinberg confronted Ryan and angrily asked him “how he could live with himself”  for drinking expensive wine while advocating cuts in Medicare and  Medicaid.  Feinberg left the restaurant after management intervened.

In one brief and unpleasant moment, Ryan got a taste of 2012-style political  combat in which everyone, everywhere is a potential opposition campaign tracker  and there are plenty of press outlets ready to publish a tracker’s  accusations.

On Saturday, I sent Feinberg an email asking a few questions about the  incident and about her unhappiness with Ryan.  First, the photo she snapped  of Ryan and two men sitting a few tables away appeared to be taken from her own  table, and on that table was a bottle of wine.  (Feinberg told TPM that she  and her husband had shared a “bottle of great wine.”)  A check of the  Bistro Bis wine list — in much the way that Feinberg did at the restaurant —  shows that the wine was a Thierry et Pascale Matrot 2005 Meursault, which is $80  per bottle at Bistro Bis. Was that, in fact, Feinberg’s bottle of wine?

I asked Feinberg, an economist, what price constituted outrageous in her  mind.  Would she have been as upset if Ryan’s wine were $150 a  bottle?  Or $100 a bottle?  Or perhaps $80 a bottle, like her own —  which is, after all, more than a day’s labor for a worker making the minimum  wage.

If the problem was not just the wine’s cost, then what other factors were  involved in Feinberg’s anger? Was it because she thought Rep. Ryan was a  hypocrite for drinking expensive wine while recommending reduced spending on  Medicare and Medicaid?  Was it because she believed Rep. Ryan was corrupt  for drinking with two men she suspected were lobbyists?  And finally, did  Feinberg believe she behaved appropriately in the matter?  Would it be  appropriate for a conservative who felt strongly about, say, Rep. Nancy Pelosi,  or Rep. Barney Frank, to do something similar to them under similar  circumstances?

Feinberg’s response was brief: “I’m sorry.  I have no comment on  this.”

After the TPM story was published, a number of left-leaning websites picked  up the tale.  New York magazine wrote that Ryan has “$350, fiscally  imprudent, fancypants” taste in wine.  The Atlantic wrote that Ryan “is in  the habit of drinking $350-a-bottle wine,” although the publication presented no  evidence to support that contention. The Atlantic also expressed hope that the  wine story would become as much of a political burden on Ryan as the $400  haircut was on former presidential candidate John Edwards.

Ryan himself is downplaying, but not avoiding, the matter.  He answered  questions from TPM, producing the receipt, but has said little else.  When  asked whether incidents like this might happen again in the future, with  Democrats and Republicans engaged in mortal combat over federal spending, a  person close to Ryan said only: “I would hope that it was just one woman who had  a little too much to drink and had a little too much fire in her belly and just  decided to cross a line.  Paul is more than happy to have a debate and  understands that people disagree with him, but there’s a right way and a wrong  way to do that.”

It turns out that this Professor Susan Feinberg worked on John Kerry’s campaign.  The relevant facts about Senator John Kerry and his rich liberal activist wife occur near the end of this very recently written piece (again, Democrats are just hypocrites ALL the time; there’s literally ALWAYS something to prove it constantly going on):

 Did you know, for instance, this about Barack Obama?

Prior to his run for President, Barack and Michelle Obama were in the top 2% of income earners, but actually gave less than the average American in charitable giving.

Obama gave .4% of his income.  In spite of being rich, and being in the top richest 2% of Americans, Obama gave only $1,050 to charity.  When the average American household (that’s mostly us in the bottom 98%) gave $1,872, which was 2.2% of their incomes.

For the record, Barack Obama was 450% more selfish, more stingy, more greedy and more self-centered than the average American.  Even though the average American had nowhere NEAR Obama’s wealth.  And that is a documented fact.  And let’s also consider how much Michelle Obama earned by receiving lavish political patronage because of her husband’s career.

And then you find that as cheap and chintzy and stingy and selfish as the redistribution of wealth president (a.k.a. Barry Hussein) was before he decided to run for president, his vice president was even STINGIER.  Because Joe Biden gave less than one-eighth of one percent of his wealth to charity.

And, of course, Democrats who lecture us on “paying our fair share” while they either welch on their debts, refuse to contribute to charity, cheat on their taxes, or all damn three are a dime a dozen.  Let’s have a few prominent examples: Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have largely welched on Hillary’s campaign debts.  There’s Charlie Rangel, the man who chaired the committee that wrote the tax laws while not bothering to pay his own damn taxes.  There’s “Turbo Tax” Timothy Geithner, the man in charge of the Treasury and I.R.S. who didn’t bother to pay his own taxes.  There’s former Democrat candidate for president John Kerry, a millionaire, who tried to wriggle away like the worm he is from paying the taxes he should have paid on his yacht.  There’s Kerry’s wife and fellow Democrat Teresa Heinz-Kerry, who in spite of inheriting the Heinz fortune actually pays less in taxes than the median American family.  And then there’s a bunch of more garden variety cockroach Democrats such as Eric Holder, Tom Daschle, Bill Richardson, and Claire McCaskill.  And the vile putrid bunch of Democrats running Bell, California.

And let me throw in “San Fran Nan” Nancy Pelosi into the mix.  Here’s an already filthy rich woman who increased her wealth by 62% last year while millions of Americans are suffering.  She’d certainly be one who would say, “Screw America, screw the American people and screw the unemployment rate; I’m getting MINE.

These are the hypocrite vermin who constantly lecture us about how “the rich should pay their fair share.”  And these slime certainly should.  But of course, while they screech the Marxist screed of class warfare, they know that they’ve written the tax laws to benefit themselves and their supporters – to the extent they even bother to follow those tax laws that they demand everybody else follow to begin with.

“The audacity of indifference.”

You think these people don’t know their way around $350 bottles of wine the way you know the way to the bathroom in your own home?

Let’s get back to Susan Feinberg and the guy she thought deserved to be president.  John Kerry’s wife is a filthy rich heiress who inhereited the Heinz fortune.  But guess how much taxes she pays?  She’s structured it so she actually pays less than the median American family.  Did she HAVE to do that?  Oh, no.  She just wanted to screw you, the typical taxpayer, by using every possible gimmick to lessen her tax burden even while she self-righteously lectures everybody else about their “duty to pay more.”  SHE could pay more, but she is a liberal, and ergo sum a hypocrite.

How about John Kerry himself?  Well, John Kerry splurged on himself to buy a $7 million yacht.  Not feeling any need to give American workers jobs, Kerry opted to buy his yacht in New Zealand.  And then, not feeling any need to pay taxes, Kerry opted to moor his yacht in Rhode Island rather than in his own state of Massachusetts, so he could save $1/2 a million in tax.  But that doesn’t stop him from lecturing everybody else.

And, according to garden variety self-righteous liberal hypocrite Susan Feinberg, THIS behavior is just fine.  It’s that Ryan guy who was actually himself rather surprised at how much it costs to have dinner with rich friends (I’ve experienced that myself when I looked at a tab from a restaurant a date or a friend have suggested in the past) who is evil.

A small government free market guy who believes people should be free to keep and spend their own money having a $350 bottle of wine is not hypocritical; a liberal who says the rich should pay more in taxes while welching on his or her own taxes is, by contrast, a quintessential hypocrite.

I’d say I was amazed at the chutzpah of a liberal who goes to dine at a high-end restaurant and then is appalled that a Republican would actually go to the same restautant.  But I have long come to understand that the essential ingredient to liberalism is blatant abject hypocrisy.  To put it in the context of her own story, “When she had finished her own pricey meal, she got up and rudely gave Paul Ryan a facefull of the hell her husband tragically has to live with every night of his life for daring to have a pricey meal.”

Can Someone Explain Why The Government Should Be The Unions’ Bag Man And Forcibly-Collect Union Dues???

This is really quite amazing; not that the Republicans are ending the practice in Florida, but rather that it was ever done anywhere in the first place:

House approves bill banning automatic deduction for union dues
By Kathleen Haughney, Tallahassee Bureau
2:00 p.m. EDT, March 25, 2011

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida House delivered a major blow to public employee unions Friday, approving a bill that would ban automatic dues deduction from a government paycheck and require members to sign off on the use of their dues for political purposes.

Democrats and Republicans fought over the legislation for just under two hours. Democrats and labor unions have accused conservatives of “union-busting” and said the bill was more about political payback than public policy. Unions have typically been big backers of Democratic candidates.

Rep. Chris Dorworth, R-Lake Mary, the House sponsor of the legislation, said this was simply the state’s movement to get out of the dues deduction business and let the unions take care of it.

“It’s a bill that empowers membership of labor unions,” Dorworth said.

The measure, HB 1021, passed by a 73-40 vote, with three Republican lawmakers siding with the Democrats.

Florida is a “right to work” state, which means a worker is not forced to join a union. But many public employees do so, and state employers typically withhold union dues from workers’ paychecks. A portion of those dues is set aside by their unions for education, community action — and political contributions.

Democrats argued that Republicans are simply trying to take out their political opponents.

“It’s about silencing the opposition. That’s not democratic,” said Rep. Richard Steinberg, D-Miami Beach.

During the last general election cycle, the statewide teachers’ union gave more than $3.4 million in campaign contributions, mostly to Democrats. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees doled out nearly $1.4 million, much of it directly to the state Democratic Party.  And the AFL-CIO and other labor groups gave hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

For the past few weeks, labor groups have been actively campaigning against the bill and testifying against it in legislative committee meetings, but the Republican majority was largely united in pushing the bill through the House.

“This bill aims to do nothing more than silencing dissent,” said Florida Education Association President Andy Ford. “The lawmakers who voted for this bill have signaled their desire to use the power of government to single out and attack the hardworking men and women who serve Florida in public employment.”

The Senate version of the bill, sponsored by Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, has one more committee stop before it makes it to the floor.

Republicans have denied Democrats’ accusations that the bill is a political attack, saying the legislation was designed to get government out of the political process since it would no longer be collecting dues for organizations that sometimes do political work. And people who decide they don’t want their dues used for political purposes can say no, Republican lawmakers argued.

“If you want your money –your money– you get to keep it,” said Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, R-Miami.

What am I supposed to say, unions?  “Sorry.  Don’t got it right now.”  Or maybe, “The check’s in the mail.”

I absolutely love the way liberals turn reality on its head and then spit on it after urinating on it and defecating on it.  By voting to give workers a chance to decide for themselves whether or not to fund the unions – instead of this bizarre practice where the government forcibly seizes their money and gives it to people who are ostensibly bargaining against the government that pays the bills – Republicans are “silencing dissent” and “undemocratic.”

It is “undemocratic” to believe that a worker shouldn’t be forced by the government to give his or her wages to a union that fundamentally opposes that workers core interests and beliefs.

On a liberal-fascist view, “democracy” means refusing to allow the people to vote.  “Democracy” means the government seizing the people’s money and giving it to ideological organizations.

Apparently, given that it is “silencing dissent” to end this practice, Republicans should pass another bill requiring the government to deduct from union workers’ paychecks moneys payable to the Grand Old Party.

We’ve reached the point where arguing about democracy with a “Democrat” is rather like arguing nuclear physics with a cockroach.

The Real Issues Behind Arizona’s New Illegal Immigration Law

George Will, on ABC’s “This Week,” hit the nail right on the head regarding Arizona’s new illegal immigration policy, just signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer:

“Reasonable suspicion” that the person is an alien. What does that mean, George?

WILL: Well, the Fourth Amendment says there should be no unreasonable searches and seizures, and we’ve generated volumes of case law trying to sort out what that means over the last century or so. So it’s not clear what that means. Let’s say this about Arizona. They have 460,000, an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants there. So before Washington lectures Arizonans on irresponsibility, perhaps Washington ought to attend to the central attribute of national sovereignty which is to control the borders. We are the only developed nation in the world with a 2,000 mile border with an undeveloped country and we have a magnet of a welfare state to the north.

So this is not Arizona’s fault. Beyond that, this should be said however. Reasonable suspicion is going to put upon the police of Arizona a terribly difficult job. This is what the governor said. “We must enforce the law evenly and without regard to skin color, accent or social status.” I don’t know how do you that. […]

WILL: Again, in defense of Arizona, large majority of Arizonans support this bill and a large majority of Arizonans are not, by definition, the fringe of the state. They are temperate, decent people with a huge problem.

What the Arizona law does is make a state crime out of something that already is a crime, a federal crime. Now, the Arizona police — and I’ve spent time with the Phoenix Police Department — these are not bad people. These are professionals who are used to making the kind of difficult judgments. Suspicion of intoxicated driving, all kinds of judgments are constantly made by policemen. And I wouldn’t despair altogether their ability to do this in a professional way. […]

GLICK: So put the 3,000 troops on the border as McCain suggests.

WILL: Build a fence, do what McCain suggests, and you’ll find that the American people are not xenophobic, they are not irrational on the subject, but they do want this essential attribute of national sovereignty asserted.

TUCKER: And where does the money come from for that, George?

WILL: It’s a rounding error on the GM bailout.

A number of major points come out of George Will’s remarks:

1) This is NOT Arizona’s fault; it’s the federal government’s fault.  The first order of business for any government of any nation-state is to protect their borders from invasion; and the U.S. government has utterly failed to perform that function.  Worse, up to this point, they have even perversely prevented the states from acting to save themselves.

2) Arizona’s illegal immigration policy is NOT some “racist” or “extreme” agenda; it is supported by an overwhelming majority of Arizonans:

The Arizona legislature has now passed the toughest measure against illegal immigration in the country, authorizing local police to stop and check the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 70% of likely voters in Arizona approve of the legislation, while just 23% oppose it.

These are reasonable people put into an unreasonable position by a bunch of extremists who are running our government and who are leading racist organizations such as La Raza (which literally means “the race” – and how racist can you get?).

The “racist extremists are on the other side from the decent Arizona people:

Whenever I’m asked about media treatment of the Tea Parties, I ask myself a simple question: What do you suppose the media would say if tea partiers were biting off people’s fingers?

A new question for today: What would they be saying if even a small group of Tea Partiers physically attacked the police at a rally?

Witnesses say a group protesting against SB1070 (Arizona’s harsh new immigration law) began to fight with a man who was for the controversial immigration bill.

Police tried escorting that man away from the scene, fearing for his safety, when they too came under attack by people throwing items, including water bottles.

And, yes, the police are under more than just rock and bottle attacks from protesters who want to prevent Arizona from keeping illegal immigrants outside their borders:

(CNSNews.com) – Law enforcement officials from the Arizona counties hardest hit by illegal immigration say they want U.S. troops to help secure the border, to prevent the deaths of more officers at the hands of criminals who enter the country illegally.

“We’ve had numerous officers that have been killed by illegal immigrants in Arizona,” Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said Monday at a Capitol Hill news conference. “And that shouldn’t happen one time.”

Babeu said the violence in Arizona has reached “epidemic proportions” and must be stopped. “In just one patrol area, we’ve had 64 pursuits — failure to yield for an officer — in one month,” Babeu said. “That’s out of control.”

I have seen a number of occasions in which a situation went way too far one way, which ultimately led to it swinging way too far the other way.  I believe that the Democrats under Obama have done that very thing on virtually every issue under the sun.  I would say the following: don’t act like a bunch of rabid leftwing extremists, and then cry when conservatives start acting like a bunch of rabid rightwing extremists.

3) Given the fact that the federal government – aided by a powerful special interest lobby, and aided even further by judicial activists who refuse to make a distinction between citizens and illegal immigrants – have refused to protect our borders, Arizona decided to do the job the federal government has refused to do.  That means that Arizona police officers are going to have to step up and do a tough job.

Being a police officer means making judgment calls, and balancing peoples’ rights with enforcing laws every single day.

Bottom line: if you think police can’t make a reasonable determination whether someone is here illegally, I hope you don’t think law enforcement can make any other reasonable judgments (such as whether I’m driving drunk), either.

4) Finally, if we just built the damn wall like Bush tried to do, we wouldn’t be in this stupid mess to begin with.  And the people who screamed about that wall have no right to complain with Arizona’s new policy now.  They BEGGED for the tough new Arizona law.

The shrill cry of the leftwing was that a border wall was identical to the Iron Curtain.  The only thing wrong with that is that it is beyond ignorant; the Iron Curtain was created to keep citizens from escaping to freedom; a border wall would protect out citizens by keeping illegal immigrants who have no right to be here out.

Liberals also cite the Posse Comitatus Act as preventing the powers of the federal government from using the military for law enforcement.  But that begs the question: just how is protecting our borders from foreign invasion “law enforcement”?  This is a clear situation in which our national security is at issue.  The soldiers on the border would not be arresting American citizens; they would be detaining foreign invaders.

The Chinese built the Great Wall of China to keep the Mongols out; and it worked.  And I’m just guessing that a people who put a man on the moon can build a damn wall that does the job.

Bottom line, I think the Arizona law probably ultimately goes too far.  But like I said, pro-illegal immigration forces DEMANDED a law that went too far by steadfastly refusing any form of reasonable policy.

There is no reason whatsoever that citizenship should not be checked along with identity and residence, under the same conditions and situations in which it is reasonable to ascertain identity and residence.  And if you are here illegally, your ass should be on the next bus out of the country – after serving jail time for violating our borders and breaking our laws.  And the wall that we build should make sure you don’t come back.

Checking citizenship (or immigration status) at every arrest, or at every reasonable situation in which police check for identity, would take away the “racist” profiling issues.

Because, yes, I’m just as ticked off at the illegal immigrant Canadian or Irishman as I am at the illegal immigrant Mexican.

At the same time, building a wall to protect what is yours should be familiar to any child who has ever walked down the sidewalks of his or her own neighborhood.  I’m not “racist” for building a wall; and it is frankly racist to suggest that I am.  It amounts to basic common sense.  And combined with a military patrol that would be able to identify and apprehend anyone climbing over that wall, it would make the issues surrounding “border enforcement” moot.

You can disrespect America’s borders as much as you want – so long as you remain on the other side of them.

Democrat Admits REAL Purpose Of ObamaCare ‘to control the people’

Conservatives would rather their points be heeded beforehand than be proven right afterward.  That said, we’re proven right again.

We have been arguing that one of the very worst aspects to ObamaCare is its destruction of freedom.  Contrary to the historic goals of liberals to “fundamentally transform” America into a form of European socialism, Thomas Jefferson rightly said that, “With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell.”

And so something that major House Democrat figure Rep. John Dingell said is very revealing:

“The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

Hear him say it on Youtube.

Thank you for your rare moment of inadvertent honesty, Rep. Dingell.

When Barack Obama signed this 2,700 page monster into law yesterday, he said, “These reforms won’t give the government more control over your health care.” But that statement is simply untrue; otherwise over 16,000 new IRS agents wouldn’t need to be hired to enforce the mandates, now would they?

FreedomWorks.org makes the following point:

The Reid bill could just as easily be called the “Secretary Shall Bill.”  It references the “Secretary” 2,185 times and it uses the phrase the “Secretary shall” a shocking 725 times.  Each time it is granting a power to whoever is appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services, instead of empowering individuals.

But it’s even worse than that: ObamaCare creates a whopping 159 new federal agencies to force you to do what liberals want, and to prevent you from doing what liberals don’t want.

Individual mandates requiring you with the full power of law to purchase health insurance from the Reich’s “approved list” of insurance salesmen.  Sixteen thousand new IRS agents to poke through your personal life to make sure you did so.  A Secretary of Human Services run amok with all kinds of new powers administered through 159 new federal government bureaucracies.

Democrat Dingell couldn’t have expressed it better: he and his fellow Democrats have labored “to put the legislation together to control the people.”

And as of yesterday, they succeeded.

And, amazingly, they aren’t done taking power and freedom away from the people.  Only days after they took over health care, Democrats are already planning an even nastier takeover via a public option bill.  This ugly, demonic monstrosity will only grow, and grow, and grow.

They can’t stop themselves.  They will continue usurping power and spending trillions of dollars until the country implodes or they are booted out of office.

Vote for freedom.  Vote the Democrats out of office.

Otherwise, prepare to live in the rat maze:

Barack Obama Oh-So Close To Being Jimmy Carter, Jr.

This article from a mainstream liberal does so many things.  1) It tells us the only thing that keeps Obama from already being the complete loser and failure Jimmy Carter was is Rahm Emanuel; 2) It tells us that Barack Obama has repeatedly ignored wise advice and paid attention to far-left liberal lunacy; and 3) It points out that the failure of health care isn’t Republican obstructionism, but Barry Hussein stupidity and his refusal to try to pass bills that Republicans could have supported.

I’m glad that even liberals are starting to recognize that this health care mess we’re in wasn’t the Republicans’ fault; it was Obama’s incompetence and hard-core liberal ideology.

Why Obama needs Rahm at the top

By Dana Milbank
Sunday, February 21, 2010; A13

Let us now praise Rahm Emanuel.

No, seriously.

It is the current fashion to blame President Obama’s disappointing first year on his chief of staff. “First, remove Rahm Emanuel,” writes Leslie Gelb in the Daily Beast, because he lacks “the management skills and discipline to run the White House.”

The Financial Times’s Ed Luce reports that the “famously irascible” Emanuel has “alienated many of Mr. Obama’s closest outside supporters,” while the New America Foundation’s Steve Clemons lumps Emanuel in with the “Core Chicago Team Sinking Obama Presidency.”

They join liberal interests who despised Emanuel long before he branded them “retarded.” Jane Hamsher of firedoglake.com, together with conservative activist Grover Norquist, demanded a Justice Department investigation into Emanuel, who is “far too compromised to serve as gatekeeper to the president.”

As Emanuel would say: What the [expletive deleted]?

Clearly, “Rahmbo” has no shortage of enemies in this town, and with Obama’s approval rating dipping below 50 percent, they have ammunition. But sacking Emanuel is the last thing the president should do.

Obama’s first year fell apart in large part because he didn’t follow his chief of staff’s advice on crucial matters. Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter.

Obama chose the profane former Clinton adviser for a reason. Where the president is airy and idealistic, Rahm is earthy and calculating. One thinks big; the other, a former House Democratic Caucus chair, understands the congressional mind, in which small stuff counts for more than broad strokes.

Obama’s problem is that his other confidants — particularly Valerie Jarrett and Robert Gibbs, and, to a lesser extent, David Axelrod — are part of the Cult of Obama. In love with the president, they believe he is a transformational figure who needn’t dirty his hands in politics.

The president would have been better off heeding Emanuel’s counsel. For example, Emanuel bitterly opposed former White House counsel Greg Craig’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year, arguing that it wasn’t politically feasible. Obama overruled Emanuel, the deadline wasn’t met, and Republicans pounced on the president and the Democrats for trying to bring terrorists to U.S. prisons. Likewise, Emanuel fought fiercely against Attorney General Eric Holder’s plan to send Khalid Sheik Mohammed to New York for a trial. Emanuel lost, and the result was another political fiasco.

Obama’s greatest mistake was failing to listen to Emanuel on health care. Early on, Emanuel argued for a smaller bill with popular items, such as expanding health coverage for children and young adults, that could win some Republican support. He opposed the public option as a needless distraction.

The president disregarded that strategy and sided with Capitol Hill liberals who hoped to ram a larger, less popular bill through Congress with Democratic votes only. The result was, as the world now knows, disastrous.

Had it gone Emanuel’s way, a politically popular health-care bill would have passed long ago, leaving plenty of time for other attractive priorities, such as efforts to make college more affordable. We would have seen a continuation of the momentum of the first half of 2009, when Obama followed Emanuel’s strategy and got 11 substantive bills on his desk before the August recess.

Instead, Congress has ground to a halt, on climate legislation, Wall Street reforms and virtually everything else. Emanuel, schooled by Bill Clinton, knew what the true believers didn’t: that bite-sized proposals add up to big things.

Contrast Emanuel’s wisdom with that of Jarrett, in charge of “intergovernmental affairs and public engagement” — two areas of conspicuous failure. Jarrett also brought in Desiree Rogers as White House social secretary; the Salahi embarrassment ensued. Then there’s Gibbs. It’s hard to make the case that you’re a post-partisan president when your on-camera spokesman is a hyper-partisan former campaign flack.

No wonder Emanuel has set up his own small press operation and outreach function to circumvent the dysfunctional ones that Jarrett and Gibbs run. Obama needs an old Washington hand to replace Jarrett and somebody with gravitas on the podium to step in for Gibbs.

The failure of the president’s message also reflects on his message maven, Axelrod, who is an adept strategist but blinded by Obama love. A good example was Obama’s unproductive China trip in November. Jarrett, Gibbs and Axelrod went along as courtiers; Emanuel remained at his desk in Washington, struggling to keep alive the big health-care bill that he didn’t want in the first place.

In hiring Emanuel, Obama avoided the mistakes of his Democratic predecessors, who first gave the chief of staff job to besotted loyalists. Now in trouble, Obama needs fewer acolytes and more action. Rahm should stay.

If Rahm Emanuel doesn’t have a giant man-crush on Barack Obama, maybe he should stay.  Certainly, if the Milbrank article has any truth to it, Rahm Emanuel would be the only one at the White House who has either common sense or a freaking clue.

It’s actually quite funny.  Democrats are increasingly at each others’ throats while all the while telling everyone (and I’m sure trying to reassure themselves) that everything is right as rain.

Whether Rahm Emanuel stays, or whether someone else goes, Barry Hussein is an utter failure, and a future utter disgrace.  You can change the whole rest of the team and it won’t matter, because their franchise player is an incompetent loser.

Obama V.P. Pick Joe Biden Shares Direct Blame For Foreclosure Disaster

Barack Obama – you know, the guy who tells us he can fix all the problems that Bush and Republicans caused – has an uncanny track record of picking the people who actually caused all the problems in the first place for key campaign positions.

Should Joe Biden Share Blame for Foreclosure Crisis?  At least two major studies and an ABC News investigative report say “YES.”  According to interviews with financial “Experts: Many Americans Lost Homes Due to a Bill Championed by Biden.”

Add that to Penny Pritzker – Obama’s National Finance Chairperson – who was at the epicenter of the sub prime loan scandal that caused the foreclosure meltdown in the first place.  She paid $460 million of her family fortune through trusts to avoid going to jail.  And add that to Jim Johnson, Obama’s pick to chair his important Vice Presidential selection committee until he resigned amidst revelations that he had received sweetheart deals from sub-prime king Countrywide.  And Jim Johnson joined other key Democrats like Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, who received similar sweetheart deals.  And you can add to that the fact that federal regulators are pointedly blaming U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY for the run that caused the IndyMac bank failure.

This is just like Democrats: behind all the  ostentatious and pretentious chants that they are fighting the battles for the little guy, they do what is best for their political futures at the behest of big money donors.  And when what they do in the name of the “little guy” ends up blowing up in the little guys’ face, they wash their hands of it and try to blame Republicans for it (after all, it’s all President Bush’s fault).

Hey, Democrats: President Bush’s Vice President didn’t cause the foreclosure meltdown; Barack Obama’s did.  And President Bush’s national finance chair wasn’t involved in the sub prime scandal from the very beginning; Barack Obama’s was.

Read the ABC investigative report on Joe Biden below.  Warning: it’s damning.  You’ve got Biden fighting for a law that directly led to the foreclosure meltdown, which wouldn’t have passed without his efforts.  You’ve got banks and credit card companies headquartered in Delaware.  You’ve got Biden’s own son working as an executive, lobbyists, and consultant for one of the players.

Should Biden Share Blame for Foreclosure Crisis?
Experts: Many Americans Lost Homes Due to a Bill Championed by Biden
By JUSTIN ROOD

August 28, 2008Experts say hundreds of thousands of Americans may have lost their homes due to a bill championed by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., Barack Obama’s vice-presidential running mate.

At least two studies have concluded that the United States’ foreclosure crisis was exacerbated by a 2005 law that overhauled the nation’s bankruptcy law. That conclusion is echoed by other experts, although the banking and credit industry disputes it.

Congressional Republicans drove the effort to pass the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) of 2005. But Biden – who has enjoyed hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from credit industry executives – endorsed the measure early on and worked to gather Democratic support for it.

Biden’s early and vocal support was “essential” to the bill’s passage, said Travis Plunkett of the Washington D.C.-based advocacy group Consumer Federation, which opposed the measure. Biden “went out of his way to undermine criticism of the legislation,” and his efforts helped convince other Democrats to support the bill.

“Biden was a fairly strong proponent of that bankruptcy bill,” said Philip Corwin, a consultant for the American Bankers Association, which represents banks and lenders. However, Biden was “not in our pocket in any way,” he added.

Biden’s Senate office did not provide comment for this story.

Asked if the Obama/Biden campaign was concerned Biden’s record was a liability when discussing economic security, David Wade, a spokesman for the Obama/Biden campaign, said, “Barack Obama and Joe Biden have real solutions for struggling families in danger of losing their homes because of the Bush economy and abusive lending practices.”

BAPCPA “is directly responsible for the rising foreclosure rate since the end of 2005,” concluded a 2007 study by Credit Suisse. The law “increased foreclosures and the number of homes for sale,” echoed a July 2008 study by U.S. Treasury researcher David Bernstein. That study estimated the law had pushed foreclosures or forced sales on 200,000 homeowners since it went into effect, but noted that was a rough, “back-of-the-envelope” calculation.

“Trying to tie the forclosure crisis to the [2005 bankruptcy] bill is a stretch,” said the ABA’s Corwin. Corwin called the Credit Suisse report “junk” and said the Bernstein study wasn’t “worth the paper it was written on.”

The head author of the 2007 Credit Suisse report clarified his earlier findings in an email Wednesday. “The law likely contributed to increased foreclosures early on,” said researcher Don Ravitsky, but combined with other key factors, including subprime lending practices, to create the current crisis. Bernstein did not respond to a request for an interview.

The bill was backed by banks and credit card companies including MBNA, which is headquartered in Delaware, Biden’s home state. They wanted the bill because it would make it harder for Americans to use bankruptcy to avoid repaying credit card debt. MBNA executives had been Biden’s single largest source of campaign donations, and MBNA has employed Biden’s son Hunter as a company executive, lobbyist and consultant. The Obama campaign has said Hunter Biden did no work for MBNA on the bankruptcy bill. MBNA has since been bought by Bank of America.

Over the past two years, sub-prime mortgage borrowing and a weakening economy have pushed increasing numbers of Americans into dire financial straits. Under the old rules, many could have declared bankruptcy, shed much of their debt, restructured their mortgages and held onto their homes, according to experts and the two reports.

But the 2005 law Biden championed made it more expensive and more difficult to declare bankruptcy, experts conclude. That forced hundreds of thousands of distressed homeowners to sell their homes, or default on their mortgages, after which the bank would sell their former home, according to the studies. That flood of homes going up for sale in an already-weakening market further depressed home prices, according to the two reports, snowballing into the current crisis.

BAPCPA “increased home foreclosures, increased the dollar value of financial assets in default, and put additional downward price pressure on real estate markets,” concluded the Bernstein report. Bernstein conducted the report as an individual, not as a representative the Treasury Department.

Democrats Demagogue and Lie About Oil – As Usual

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday as his Democrats failed to move their energy bill:

They’ve come up with the most unbelievable dodge that I can remember. They said, ‘We’re not going to do anything on speculation because it’s no longer important,’ even though it’s part of their bill.

But that’s a bald faced lie, and he knows it.

Republicans have repeatedly said they were willing to deal on speculation, and alternative energy, and other things the Democrats want. But they insist that drilling on federal lands – which is now off limits on and off shore because of Democrats – be part of any package they will support. As usual, Democrats prove themselves to be dishonest manipulators rather than straight dealers.

You want another example of Democrats’ bald faced lies – again from the top Democrat in the Senate? Speaking again about speculation (i.e. the oil futures market), Reid said:

Something that will lower prices by 20-50%. And I think that, uh, one of the reasons the price of oil has gone down… you’ll note that it has gone down since we started, introduced, since we introduced our legislation dealing with speculation.

No it isn’t, and he knows it. On July 14, President Bush ended the executive ban on offshore drilling. The very next day saw the price of oil take the biggest drop in 17 years.

Within two days of Bush’s signing the executive order, the price of oil dropped from nearly $145 a barrel to $130.73 a barrel. And within four days, it had dropped to $128.88. And Harry Reid wants to take credit for this drop in price with his incredibly airheaded speculation bill that never really had a chance of overcoming a filibuster to begin with?

In the House, Democrats are putting the energy bill on the “suspension calender” in a move that will require a 2/3 majority to pass any legislation, but which prevents the Republicans from adding ANY amendments to allow for drilling on federal lands or contribute in any way.

Democrats are so paranoid that a drilling amendment might be introduced that they would rather scuttle any meaningful vote whatsoever.

Why did President Bush lift the ban?:

The White House announced today that President Bush will lift an executive order banning offshore oil drilling, a move aimed at stepping up pressure on Congress to end the prohibition it imposed in 1981.

The futures market reduced the price of oil because they saw the very real possibility that the American political system might finally get itself in gear to increase the supply of oil. Increased supplies lower prices. It’s as simple as that.

It is just like the Democrat Party to do everything possible to cause the problem for restricting the oil supply, and then try to claim credit for lowering prices. They are the worst kind of backstabbing liars you could possibly ever deal with.

To add to the sheer insanity of the Democrat’s position on energy, Sen. Charles Schumer said the same day:

The bottom line is very simple. We Democrats believe in the future when it comes to energy policy. We believe in alternative energy, we believe we have to wean ourselves away from oil and dependency from people like Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Putin. And they want to throw themselves right into their owns because big oil wants it. So the equations is simple. The Republicans equal big oil and the past. They do what big oil wants. We democrats represent alternatives weaning ourselves away from oil and the future.

So Democrats state that they have no intention of doing anything to increase the supply of oil or doing anything meaningful to reduce the cost even as they blame the Republicans who ARE trying to increase the oil supply.

Or to put it another way, how on earth can Democrats be both for oil and against oil at the same time?

And pandering demagogue that Schumer is, he labels Republicans as stooges of the oil companies which he and other Democrats have repeatedly demonized.

Oil companies certainly have their flaws. But they have one essential virtue: they produce oil. And in demonizing oil companies, Democrats have long-since crossed the line into demonizing the oil that these companies produce.

Or, to put it in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s words:

“Those costs that you don’t see on the bottom line. That is, coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick, its Global Warming, its ruining our Country, its ruining our World.”

Democrats are clearly opposed to oil. And that’s why the supplies are so low and the prices are so high.

You just remember something. Right now we are dependent upon oil. That is why Al Gore keeps flying his fuel-gobbling private jets and getting himself ferried around in gas-guzzling convoys of SUVs. Oil is what we have, and it is very difficult to go without it – even for the hypocrites who tell everyone else to do so.

Democrats like Schumer and Reid are not just part of the problem – they ARE THE PROBLEM. Because of Democrats, we are doing nothing to tap our own massive energy resources. Because of Democrats, we are therefore forced to go to the very dictators that Schumer named and give them $700 billion a year for something we could be producing ourselves.

We can either go on listening to one stupid self-serving lie and excuse after another, or we can vote these fools out and elect men and women who will allow this country to provide itself with the energy we need.