What we are also experiencing is a leadership crisis

The talking points have gone out...


John Kerry was out and about on the talkies Sunday making a complete ass of himself again by blaming the credit downgrade on the tea party.

While continuing to cast doubt on the credibility of Standard & Poor’s, several Democrats on Sunday said there is an even greater culprit in the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating: the tea party.

“I believe this is, without question, the tea party downgrade,” Sen. John F. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, a day that also saw mounting anxieties in world markets over the downgrade among myriad other economic woes worldwide. Some of the world’s top financial ministers issued a joint statement Sunday night committing themselves to preserve the stability of financial markets and their economies.

David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Obama, used the exact same phrase in dubbing the credit rating drop the “tea party downgrade,” as Democrats tried to position themselves as reasonable, pragmatic leaders and conservative Republicans as irresponsible ideologues who caused the downgrade by refusing to accept any new taxes.

So, let's get this straight: One of the leaders of a party that has controlled the Senate for over 4 for years and which has not come close to producing a budget in about 2-1/2 years and which also shows no testicular fortitude to address the real driver of our national debt, entitlements, is calling out an entity that has applied a laser-like focus on achieving some degree of fiscal sanity to avoid the credit downgrade that just happened on Friday.

Or to put it another way: If Kerry is correct, what Standard and Poor's was saying was needed to avert a downgrade was more spending, more taxes and more government. But somehow, we don't think that Paul Krugman and S&P are of the same mind on this. Crazy, we know, but it's just a notion.


But don't take our word for it, what did S&P have to say about all this?:

The credit-rating agency did not call for tax hikes in its assessment: “Standard & Poor’s takes no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures that Congress and the Administration might conclude is appropriate for putting the U.S.’s finances on a sustainable footing.” No position on tax hikes. But S&P, along with the other credit-rating agencies, has long taken a position on one aspect of our fiscal troubles: entitlement reform. From S&P again: “The plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.”

Kind of sounds like it was about the debt and the lack of any real debt-limiting/reducing entitlement reform, doesn't it?


Well, you can probably forget about that as the pedophiles that form the ruling class in D.C. don't want anything to do with entitlement reform least of all the man currently in the Oval Office who made a speech not too long ago calling for $4 trillion in deficit-reduction to which the head of the Congressional Budget Office, a Democrat, responded wryly, "(unfortunately), the CBO does not score speeches."



Exit question: Since we are lacking any real adult leadership in this debt crisis how long before we get downgraded again?

Picking on the pasty

The more we think about this baseless broadside upon the Chamber of Commerce by Team O, the more bizarre it seems.

Here's David Harsanyi of the Denver Post:

But let's face it, no one is really buying the argument. Though, a perceptive voter might ask themselves this: If the United States Chamber of Commerce — composed of some of the most moderate, milquetoast, government- friendly saps in the country — are now on the Enemies List, who exactly does the president think is reasonable? If the crony capitalists aren't good enough for Barack Obama, who is?

Precisely.

We always had an image of Chamber of Commerce types as friendly, roundish, middle-aged business men who gathered on the second Tuesday evening of each month to come up with ideas for the billboard alongside 99 to convince travellers to dine and stay overnight in Visalia rather than Tulare.

Nefarious foreign money financiers for far-right campaigns was not part of the profile.

Perhaps we've been making too big a deal of this as Bob Schieffer so aptly puts it at the 3:20 mark in his little sit down with Axelrod over the weekend.



"Is that the best you can do?"

Yeah, we've probably spent too much time on it as it is but one more fun fact before we leave this whole non-issue:

The White House plans to continue attacking groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other conservative organizations for not disclosing the names of donors behind political ads. But during the 2004 Democratic primary campaign, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was involved with a political advocacy group that refused to reveal its own donors until the law required it.

Poll Question

New poll question which can be found in the upper right hand margin of the page.

We hesitated going with this poll but after it was revealed that the New York Fed, while being headed by the now Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, told the money-laundering service, AIG, to keep quiet about to which financial institutions AIG was funneling its TARP money, we figured, screw it - let’s roll.

Poll question: Who’s the biggest hack in the Obama administration?

We don’t want to influence the voting, but for the sake of discussion, we don’t think it’s either Rahmbo or Axelrod. You are certainly welcome to disagree. We give these two credit for never trying to sell themselves as something they are not. Emanuel is an unapologetic, bare-knuckles, Chicago-way pol. He is who he is and we have a grudging degree of respect for that. Same for Axelrod: In our eyes at least, he has never tried to fashion himself as anything other than the absolute sleaze merchant he is. Again, with the sliding scale to which you have to hold this gang, that is to be commended.

We certainly invite write-ins in the comment section because we realize this list is by no means a comprehensive one with respect to potential candidates. Here are your choices listed in alphabetical order:





David Axelrod - Senior advisor to the President





Rahm Emanuel - White House Chief of Staff





Timothy Geithner - Secretary of the Department of Treasury




Eric Holder - Attorney General





Valerie Jarrett - special advisor to the President

But it wasn't supposed to be this way...

Poland's Krystian Zimerman, widely regarded as one of the finest pianists in the world, created a furor Sunday night in his debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall when he announced this would be his last performance in America because of the nation's military policies overseas.

Before playing the final work on his recital, Karol Szymanowski’s "Variations on a Polish Folk Theme," Zimerman sat silently at the piano for a moment, almost began to play, but then turned to the audience. In a quiet but angry voice that did not project well, he indicated that he could no longer play in a country whose military wants to control the whole world.

Zimerman apparently did not get the memo that anti-Americanism isn’t cool anymore.

Hilarious.