CEOS of Big 3 Auto Fly Private Jets to DC to Beg for Bailout

Anyone else think this is bullcrap?

All three CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler - exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM’s $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.

“We want to continue the vital role we’ve played for Americans for the past 100 years, but we can’t do it alone,” Wagoner told the Senate Banking Committee.

Obviously, they can’t do it without their private jets either.

1 comment November 19th, 2008 at 11:09am kimberly

Obama picks presidential assassin’s lawyer as White House counsel

From HotAir:

Barack Obama has selected Gregory Craig as White House counsel, a move that will recall some controversial legal cases over the last few years. Craig has plenty of experience in politics as well as the courtroom, having served as Bill Clinton’s legal counsel during the impeachment hearings. Craig flipped from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama early in the primaries, and Obama has repaid his support — but Craig’s caseload will raise a few eyebrows:

Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama, according to Democratic officials.

Craig is intimately familiar with the president-elect’s record because he played the role of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in debate preparations.

The officials said Obama has settled on Craig but were not sure when the appointment would be announced.

The choice gives the president-elect both experience and loyalty. During the primaries, Craig was an early Clinton alumni defector to Obama. Columnist Robert D. Novak reported back in the winter of 2007 that Craig had told him he “was impressed with Obama when he first met him at the home of investment banker Vernon Jordan, an intimate friend and supporter of the Clintons.”

Craig was an Obama foreign policy adviser during the campaign. At the start of the Clinton administration, he had been the State Department’s Director of Policy Planning, the head of State’s in-house think tank. He also was senior adviser on defense, foreign policy and national security to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Besides defending Clinton through the impeachment process, an effort that Craig lost, who else had the benefit of Craig’s counsel?

8 comments November 17th, 2008 at 01:11pm kimberly

Obama Advisor Valerie Jarrett Linked to Real Estate Scandals

Birds of a feather flock together.

Jarrett Managed Housing Project Deemed “Uninhabitable”

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents linking Valerie Jarrett, an advisor to Barack Obama and the co-chairman of the President-Elect’s transition team, to a series of real estate scandals, including several housing projects operated by convicted felon and Obama fundraiser/friend Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

According to the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Illinois Secretary of State, Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis. (Davis is also Obama’s former boss.) Jarrett was a member of the Board of Directors for the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation along with several Davis and Rezko associates, as well as the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, an organization that worked with Rezko and Davis.

(According to press reports, housing projects operated by Davis and Rezko have been substandard and beset with code violations. The Chicago Sun Times reported that one Rezko-managed housing project was “riddled with problems — including squalid living conditions…lack of heat, squatters and drug dealers.”)

As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company Jarrett also managed a controversial housing project located in Obama’s former state senate district called Grove Parc Plaza. According to the Boston Globe the housing complex was considered “uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage…In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale — a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.” Ms. Jarrett refused to comment to the Globe on the conditions of the complex.

“Like Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett is a product of the corrupt Chicago political machine. And it is no stretch to say that she was a slumlord,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “We have real concerns about Jarrett’s ethics. Washington already has plenty of corruption. We don’t need to import more of it from Chicago.”

Characterized as “the other side of Barack Obama’s brain” by CBS News, Jarrett first met the Obamas seventeen years ago when she offered Michelle Obama a job. While speculation has arisen that Jarrett could take Obama’s place in the U.S. Senate, the New York Times reported that it is more likely she will become a senior White House adviser, thus continuing her long record of being an important influence and mentor to Barack and Michelle Obama.

2 comments November 15th, 2008 at 12:21am kimberly

Karma is a bitch - Canadian Taliban Supporter Kidnapped by Taliban

Canadian Beverly Giesbrecht, who goes by the name Khadija Abdul Qahaar and who runs the Jihad Unspun website, has been kidnapped in Pakistan. She was in Pakistan making a documentary sympathetic to the Taliban.

Typically, the Taliban and AQ kill their hostages. Not sure if they will spare her life. If they do, perhaps she will become unbrainwashed and realize the Taliban ain’t her friend.

More at Weasel.

3 comments November 14th, 2008 at 09:33pm kimberly

Obama Cannot Take ANY credit for Victory in Iraq War … PERIOD

Remember this, when our troops come home victoriously, BO will most likely give a speech how he was responsible bringing the Iraq War to an end. Don’t believe the narcistic fool. He had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with it.

God bless all of our magnificant men and women in uniform!

More from Michael Yon, via Instapundit:

“There’s nothing going on. I’m with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I’m with haven’t fired their weapons on this tour and they’ve been here eight months. And the place we’re at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there’s nothing going on. I’ve been walking my feet off and haven’t seen anything. I’ve been asking Iraqis, ‘do you think the violence will kick up again,’ but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they’re usually dour.” There’s a little bit of violence here and there, but nothing that’s a threat to the general situation. Plus, not only the Iraqi Army, but even the National Police are well thought of by the populace. Training from U.S. toops has paid off, he says, in building a rapport.

2 comments November 14th, 2008 at 08:40pm kimberly

Two Democratic Senatorial Aides Nabbed for Child Porn

Lost in the media. Now, if they had been two REPUBLICAN Senatorial Aides, we’d never hear the end of it. But since they were aides to two DEMOCRAT Senators, no one hears a whisper.

A senior aide to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) was fired from his post last week after he was charged with distributing and receiving child pornography.

Jeffrey P. Rosato, an aide to Boxer and a senior policy adviser on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, was arrested last Friday, the same day he was fired from Boxer’s office, and charged with one count each of receipt and distribution of child pornography. He appeared in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Wednesday and was released on his own recognizance, but he is forbidden to have access to children or computers.

According to an FBI affidavit, an unnamed person “distributed more than 600 files containing graphic images and movies of child pornography to an undercover detective that [the person] believed was a 13-year-old boy” over the course of more than 15 online chats during a three-week period in January. In that person’s computer, the FBI found information suggesting the person had exchanged pornography with Rosato.

Investigators also found pornographic photos and movies of children on Rosato’s laptop computer during a Nov. 4 search of his Alexandria home, according to the affidavit. “Many of the images and videos depict prepubescent boys engaged in sexual acts,” it said.

Rosato’s attorney, Patrick N. Anderson of Alexandria, did not return a call seeking comment.

Seems to be a lot of this going on with aides to Senate Democrats.

Last month, a former Senate aide, James Michael McHaney, was sentenced to three years in prison on a federal charge of possession of child pornography. McHaney, 28, was arrested last year in a sting and fired from his job in the office of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.).

Add comment November 14th, 2008 at 08:32pm kimberly

Six Agencies Illegally Scoured Joe the Plumber’s Records for Dirt

Is this unbelievable or what? They came up with all these lame excuses, but we KNOW why they were digging for dirt on Joe, to give it to the MSM.

The election is over, but the Joe the Plumber case is not.

Ohio Inspector General Tom Charles said his office is now looking at a half-dozen agencies that accessed state records on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.

The Beacon Journal has learned that, in addition to the Department of Job and Family Services, two other state offices — the Ohio Department of Taxation and Ohio Attorney General Nancy Rogers — conducted database searches of Joe the Plumber.

Wurzelbacher became an instant celebrity after he asked Barack Obama a series of questions in his Toledo driveway about the Democrat’s tax policies.

In the third debate between Obama and Republican John McCain on Oct. 15, the candidates referred to Joe the Plumber more than 20 times.

The next day, the taxation department conducted two separate searches of a database of liens for unpaid taxes that were certified to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office for collection.

John Kohlstrand, a taxation department spokesman, said he is prohibited from talking about individual taxpayers, but he confirmed that the databases were checked.

The searches were done to determine whether a lien placed against the individual was appropriate and whether it remained unpaid or not, Kohlstrand said.

Yeah, right. I call BS. I hope Joe sues them, and rightly he should.

1 comment November 14th, 2008 at 06:42pm kimberly

Did Next Commander-in-Chief Falsify Selective Service Registration?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Did President-elect Barack Hussein Obama commit a federal crime in September of this year? Or did he never actually register and, instead, did friends of his in the Chicago federal records center, which maintains the official copy of his alleged Selective Service registration commit the crime for him?

It’s either one or the other, as indicated by the release of Barack Obama’s official Selective Service registration for the draft. A friend of mine, who is a retired federal agent, spent almost a year trying to obtain this document through a Freedom of Information Act request, and, after much stonewalling, finally received it and released it to me.

But the release of Obama’s draft registration and an accompanying document, posted below, raises more questions than it answers. And it shows many signs of fraud, not to mention putting the lie to Obama’s claim that he registered for the draft in June 1979, before it was required by law.

The official campaign for President may be over. But Barack Obama’s Selective Service registration card and accompanying documents show that questions about him are not only NOT over, but if the signature on the document is in fact his, our next Commander-in-Chief may have committed a federal crime in 2008, well within the statute of limitations on the matter. If it is not his, then it’s proof positive that our next Commander-in-Chief never registered with the Selective Service as required by law. By law, he was required to register and was legally able to do so until the age of 26.

8 comments November 13th, 2008 at 11:02am kimberly

For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All … Just Don’t Question the One

Hilarious! Wonder if BO would have made it TO the primaries if he had gone through this intensive of questioning. Doubt it.

WASHINGTON - Want a top job in the Obama administration ? Only pack rats need apply, preferably those not packing controversy.

A seven-page questionnaire being sent by the office of President-elect Barack Obama to those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts may be the most extensive — some say invasive — application ever.

The questionnaire includes 63 requests for personal and professional records, some covering applicants’ spouses and grown children as well, that are forcing job-seekers to rummage from basements to attics, in shoe boxes, diaries and computer archives to document both their achievements and missteps.

Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages. [Application at nytimes.com/washington .]

The application also asks applicants to “please list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.”

The vetting process for executive branch jobs has been onerous for decades, with each incoming administration erecting new barriers in an effort to avoid the mistakes of the past, or the controversies of the present. It is typically updated to reflect technological change (there was no Facebook the last time a new president came to town).

But Mr. Obama has elevated the vetting even beyond what might have been expected, especially when it comes to applicants’ family members, in a reflection of his campaign rhetoric against lobbying and the back-scratching, self-serving ways of Washington.

“President-elect Obama made a commitment to change the way Washington does business, and the vetting process exemplifies that,” said Stephanie Cutter, chief spokeswoman for the Obama transition office.

Jobs with the mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have served as lucrative incubators for Democratic and Republican administration officials. But those affiliations have become potentially toxic since the government seized both companies after years of financial irregularities that have stoked the economic crisis.

Not surprisingly, then, Question 18 of the Obama application asks whether “you, your spouse or any member of your immediate family” have been affiliated with Fannie, Freddie, American International Group, Washington Mutual and any other institution getting a government bailout.

Under “Domestic Help,” the questionnaire asks the immigration status of applicants’ housekeepers, nannies, chauffeurs and yard-workers, and whether applicants have paid the required taxes for household employees. (Those questions reflect controversies that tripped up President Bill Clinton ’s first two nominees for attorney general in 1993.)

“Every transition is cumulative,” said Michael Berman, a lawyer and lobbyist who worked in the transitions of both Mr. Clinton and President Jimmy Carter . After reviewing the Obama application, Mr. Berman added, “I am very happy I am not seeking a job in the federal government.”

A former Clinton White House official who insisted on anonymity said in an e-mail message, “I believe it is considerably more detailed than we had to fill out in ’93. Interesting that they want spouse information on everything — means lots of folks are going to have to list the very prominent — and controversial — companies that their spouses work/lobby for.”

2 comments November 13th, 2008 at 10:57am kimberly

Obama’s Ethics Rules Won’t Ban Big Fundraisers From Transition

Hope and Change. Hope and Change. Hope and Change. Keep saying it, Liberals, and maybe it will come true. LOL.

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) — President-elect Barack Obama is barring lobbyists from participating in the transition that will help install his administration. He will still leave room on his team for the rich and powerful.

Top fundraisers and other well-connected supporters will serve in an advisory capacity before the Democrat takes office on Jan. 20.

Five of the 12 members of Obama’s transition advisory board raised at least $50,000 for his presidential campaign, and eight contributed the maximum individual donation of $4,600. Other transition team members include a partner in a lobbying firm and two executives of financial companies whose employees were among his biggest donors.

“If an Obama administration is going to sell influence, these are the ones who have bought it,” said Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a Washington-based advocacy group that favors stronger campaign-finance and lobbying laws.

Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter defended the advisory board, saying it “was selected based on the skill and experience of each member, and they are providing critical advice to ensure a smooth transition process.”

Transition co-Chairman John Podesta yesterday released rules banning registered lobbyists from raising money for the transition or working for the new administration in areas on which they represented clients.

The new rules also prohibit members of the transition team who become lobbyists from trying to influence the administration on any issues that they worked on. Podesta called them “the strictest, the most far-reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history.”

Bundlers Exempt
The rules, however, won’t prevent campaign fundraisers known as bundlers from serving.

Valerie Jarrett, a transition co-chairwoman, raised between $100,000 and $200,000 for Obama, according to his campaign Web site. Two advisory board members, Julius Genachowski, managing director of Rock Creek Ventures, a Washington firm that invests in online companies, and Donald Gips, a vice president of Broomfield, Colorado-based Level 3 Communications Inc., each raised at least $500,000 for Obama.

A third, Michael Froman, brought in between $200,000 and $500,000 for the campaign. Froman is a managing director at New York-based Citigroup Inc. The financial institution’s employees and their families contributed $581,216, Obama’s seventh-biggest source of campaign cash, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group.

Campaign co-chairman William Daley, a vice chairman at New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co., also sits on the advisory board. JPMorgan employees and their families were Obama’s sixth-biggest source of donations, giving $581,460.

Registered to Lobby
Another board member, Mark Gitenstein, was registered to lobby through June, House records show. Gitenstein is a partner in the lawyer-lobbying firm of Mayer Brown LLP, whose clients include Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford Motor Co., which is pushing for government help, and New York-based Merrill Lynch & Co., which sold itself to Bank of America Corp. in September.

Obama may be learning quickly that what sounds good on the campaign trail may not always be best for governing, said Costas Panagopoulos, director of Fordham University’s Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy in New York.

“They want to find the most qualified people; some will have been donors,” Panagopoulos said. “It was probably shortsighted to make promises that such individuals would not be included in his administration.”

Plenty of Jobs
The president-elect will have plenty of opportunities to fill jobs before he takes office. Podesta said he expects the transition to have a $12 million budget and employ about 450 people. With less than half that amount coming from federal appropriations, Obama’s transition team will raise money privately, he said. As in the campaign, Obama won’t accept money from registered lobbyists and political action committees, Podesta said.

Obama raised a record $650 million for his presidential campaign as he became the first major party nominee to shun federal funds for the general election.

3 comments November 12th, 2008 at 02:45pm kimberly