The louder things squeak under pressure the closer they are to the breaking point.  Elijah Cummings has been shrieking at Darrell Issa a lot lately and even tried to pull the race card.  Then he tried to shut down the Oversight Committee hearings on the IRS scandal.  We now know why.  Issa has got his hands on e-mails from Cummings to the IRS that show a lot of “cooperation.”

Now Darrell Issa is accusing Cummings of obstructing the committee’s IRS investigation.

http://wtvr.com/2014/04/09/issa-accuses-democratic-counterpart-of-obstructing-irs-investigation/

That is not a minor charge.  It is a felony:

“The American people deserve to know the full truth. They deserve to know why the ranking member and minority staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform surreptitiously contacted the IRS about an individual organization without informing the majority staff and even failed to disclose the contact after it became an issue during a subcommittee proceeding,”

John Boehner has been reluctant to establish a select committee and/or to demand a special prosecutor.  His position was that hearings were ongoing and that due process was taking place.  Based on his angry press briefing this morning it appears likely that Boehner is ready to take action:

http://www.speaker.gov/video/boehner-unloads-wh-over-irs-benghazi-fast-furious-they-owe-american-people-truth

 “The frustration is, is that the American people have not been told the truth about what happened at the IRS.

The American people have not been told the truth about what happened in Fast and Furious.

The administration has not told the American people the truth about Benghazi.

We’ve been going through all of these hearings, having to hold people in contempt, because they’ve made it impossible to get to the documents.

They have not been forthcoming.  They owe the American people the truth.

And when it comes to Benghazi, we’ve got four Americans who are dead, and their families deserve the truth about what happened.  And the administration refuses to tell them the truth.”

The main stream media has been downplaying these stories from day one.  Republicans have been afraid to up the ante because they were afraid of “witch hunt” accusations.  I believe Republicans were waiting for a smoking gun and Elijah Cummings and his e-mails may have provided them exactly what they need.

If Boehner calls for a Select Committee this whole sordid affair is going to blow sky high.  As they say, “what goes around, Cummings around.”  It is about time.

Note:  The loudest squeaks today are coming from Eric Holder.  Just saying!

TDM

It turns out that Al Sharpton, yes that Al Sharpton, was working undercover as an FBI informant.  At least that is the story in the following article from thesmokinggun.com:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/investigation/al-sharpton-764312

After reading this one doesn’t know whether to applaud, boo, laugh or cry.  I am not sure this qualifies as an act of great courage.  It appears that the FBI made Sharpton an offer he couldn’t afford to turn down. This wouldn’t be the first time the FBI flipped somebody lower down on the food chain so they could target the big buys.  I guess you could say Sharpton is not only slime, he is low level slime.  You know, the kind of guy the FBI lets off the hook so they could go after more important fish.

This story is really disgusting, particularly with regard to the corruption in the music industry.  Some of this stuff has been the subject of rumors for years but to read details like this sheds a whole different light on the subject.

Sharpton, of course, has denied working as an FBI informant.

Sharpton vehemently denies having worked as an FBI informant. He has alleged that claims of government cooperation were attempts by dark forces to stunt his aggressive brand of civil rights advocacy or, perhaps, get him killed. In his most recent book, “The Rejected Stone,” which hit best seller lists following its October 2013 publication, Sharpton claimed to have once been “set up by the government,” whose agents later leaked “false information” that “could have gotten me killed.” He added, “So I have been seriously tested in what I believe over the years.”

Why would anyone be surprised to learn that Sharpton is a liar based on what we already know about him?  How on earth Obama could let someone like this get close to him?  Doesn’t the White House run background checks anymore?  If the White House knew about this, it is really bad and if they didn’t, it is really bad.

We obviously don’t know all the facts, but this article has a lot of documentation and the authors appear to have done their homework. We can expect Sharpton supporters to try and discredit some part of this article in an attempt to discredit the entire report.  I am not sure that will work this time.  The least likely outcome is for Sharpton to come clean.

In any event, this is one heck of a story.  “A snitch in time dropped a dime, mobsters did time and that’s just fine but slime is still slime.”

TDM

George W. Bush just surfaced again with an interview by his daughter Jenna Bush Hager who works for NBC News.  She interviewed him about his portraits of world leaders that will be displayed in the Bush Presidential library.  Jenna did a great job and President Bush came across well.

George W. Bush has something that Democrats cannot even recognize.  He has class.  This interview showed a very classy man, comfortable in his own skin.  It also showed a bright man, a focused man, a driven man and a man of compassion.  The contrast between George W. Bush and President Obama could not be starker.  The effect was magnified by the deliberate decision of President Bush to avoid the spotlight over the last five plus years.  He was not out there trying to defend his record or take cheap shots at Obama.  Instead he just said that he was willing to let history be the judge of his performance.  Now that he is starting to surface the effective is dramatic.

There was an even bigger contrast between Jenna Bush Hager and Chelsea Clinton. The liberal left continues to fawn over Chelsea and they keep asking her if she will run for public office.  But while Chelsea Clinton totally bombed as a special correspondent for NBC, Jenna Bush Hager has real talent.

Perhaps the biggest contrast is between Michelle Obama and Laura Bush.  Although the liberal left and the main stream media  tried desperately to portray Michelle Obama as the second coming of Jacqueline Kennedy it hasn’t worked.  All Laura Bush had to do was stand there beside her husband and she outclassed Michelle Obama in every way possible.  It is really simple.  Class will always out.  The Bush family has class, Obama, not so much.  That was very obvious to anyone who watched the Bush interview.

TDM

IN HER OWN WORDS

Hillary Clinton exposed herself as totally incompetent.  Just read the following transcript of her failed attempt to give a coherent answer to a softball question specifically designed to tee it up for her:

Question:  “When you look at your time as Secretary of State, what are you most proud of? And what do you feel was unfinished, and maybe have another crack at one day?”

Answer:  “Well, I really see — that was good — that’s why he wins prizes. Look, I really see my role as Secretary, in fact leadership in general in a democracy, as a relay race. When you run the best race you can run, you hand off the baton. Some of what hasn’t been finished may go on to be finished, so when President Obama asked me to be Secretary of State I agreed,”

“We had the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, we had two wars. We had continuing threats from all kinds of corners around the world that we had to deal with. So it was a perilous time frankly. What he said to me was, ‘Look, I have to be dealing with the economic crisis, I want you to go out and represent us around the world.’ And it was a good division of labor because we needed to make it clear to the rest of the world, that we were going to get our house in order. We were going to stimulate, and grow, and get back to positive growth and work with our friends and partners.”

“So I think we did that. I’m very proud of the stabilization and the really solid leadership that the administration provided that I think now, leads us to be able to deal with problems like Ukraine because we’re not so worried about a massive collapse in Europe and China — trying to figure out to do with all their bond holdings and all the problems we were obsessed with. I think we really restored American leadership in the best sense. That, once again — people began to rely on us as setting the values, setting the standards. I just don’t want to lose that because we have a dysfunctional political situation in Washington. Then of course, a lot of particulars, but I am finishing my book so you’ll be able to read all about it.”

Translation:   Even I cannot think of a single accomplishment, so I will just blame everything on Republicans, again, and hire another ghost writer to write some silly nonsense that will make me even more money.

TDM

We are now learning more facts about how Obama saved General Motors.  In a world dominated by ObamaCare, the Ukraine, Benghazi, Syria, Iran, IRS Targeting, Fast & Furious and NSA eavesdropping, the GM story could just top the list.  Remember when Biden gloated that Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive.  Frankly after all the other lies and cover-ups by this administration I am no longer completely sure Bid Laden is dead.  How on earth could we trust this government with regard to anything?  As for GM, the mismanagement by the Obama administration may come closer to killing GM than saving it.

This started out bad, with the Obama administration stiffing GM’s creditors and bond holders while bailing out the UAW.  This, of course, is the same UAW which demanded GM sign labor agreements that made it impossible for GM to complete.  In effect UAW was bailed out from the problem they created.

That was bad enough, but now we know more about the high cost of governmental leadership.  At the same time the Obama administration was trash talking Toyota for an allegedly defective floor mat, GM was covering up huge safety defects.

The following article in Yahoo News is scathing:

http://news.yahoo.com/dealers-gm-customer-anxiety-rising-sales-may-hit-165305715–sector.html;_ylt=AwrBEiGQkj1TxAYAZMLQtDMD

The new CEO at GM is trying to explain this:

“It will take some time for the brand to gain back the customers it lost,” she said. “But I have got to believe that General Motors will use this opportunity to really focus on improving the safety of their product.”

She “has” to believe but the rest of us would be insane to believe.  This is what happens when you turn over one management of the most respected companies in the history of the United States to a bunch of naïve radicals.  It doesn’t get much worse than letting people drive around in cars knowing that the air bags may not work.  Perhaps I am wrong, but this seems to border on criminal negligence.  PGE is facing criminal charges with regard to the pipeline explosion in San Bruno.  This seems much worse.

This is just another example of what happens when the government tries to manage anything.  Just today we learned that the State Department, under the brilliant leadership of Hillary Clinton, spent $6 billion in payments to contractors and it can’t quite figure out where the money went:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/04/04/6-Billion-Goes-Missing-State-Department

In a special “management alert” made public Thursday, the State Department’s Inspector General Steve Linick warned “significant financial risk and a lack of internal control at the department has led to billions of unaccounted dollars over the last six years.

Nice!  Hillary is obviously over-qualified to be a Democratic President.

TDM

Democrats in California just lost the ability to ramrod dumb ideas through the California legislature.  Today the California Senate voted to suspend all three State Senators who are facing serious allegations of corruption.  That eliminates the super majority where Democrats could pass any legislation they wanted without a single Republican vote:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CALIFORNIA_LEGISLATURE_CORRUPTION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-03-28-14-12-27

Credit should go to Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento.  He is finally acknowledging that there is a very serious problem here.  It took him far too long to do this, but he is doing it now.

“One is an anomaly, two a coincidence, but three? That’s not what this Senate is about,”

Actually, it is what this Senate is about, but hopefully that will change.  There are many people who believe that California is now permanently in the Democratic column.  But a lot of people thought that about Michigan and Wisconsin too.  The lesson here is that the only thing certain is change.  It would be foolish to expect Republicans to win back any level of control in California any time soon.  For one thing the Republican Party establishment here is incredibly incompetent.  Republicans have been shredding membership for years.

One of the major fights that will happen how is with regard to the nature of the Republican Party itself.  The current Republican Party Establishment constantly talks about the need to expand the tent to attract more moderates.  What they fail to acknowledge is that this is the same strategy they have been trying to implement for decades and it has led to nothing but catastrophic failure.  Hopefully this opportunity will be seized by some very sharp Tea Party like people who realize you win elections by offering real change rather than a distorted echo.

In any event, the liberal agenda in California has been brought to a screeching halt and that is a very good thing.

TDM

California is learning the full cost of giving too much power to labor unions.  It is obvious to anyone with half a brain that it is nearly impossible to get elected to any State-wide office without selling out to the public sector unions.

The following article from Reuters in November 2012 documented the total union control of Democrats in California:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/08/us-usa-campaign-california-idUSBRE8A70BV20121108

Unions spent millions on every state wide election while desperately trying to stifle the ability of business owners to fight back with their own funds.   This is the liberal version of equal and fair elections.  Everyone has an equal opportunity, as long as you are a liberal.

Granted Democrats were helped along by a totally dysfunctional and inept Republican Party.  There have been some really pathetic Republican candidates.  But as Reuters pointed out, the deck was pretty much stacked in favor of Democrats.  When you add in a main stream media that also worships the union label, it was a perfect political storm for Republicans.

In order to run for state wide office in California you had to do two things.  First, you had to be a Democrat.  Second, you had to swear full faith and allegiance to the public sector unions.  No Republican or even a Democrat who dared stand up to the unions had any realistic chance of getting elected in California.  The results are predictable.  If you are willing to sell your soul to the unions as the price of getting elected, you will probably sell it to anyone else with enough money.

There are now three prominent Democratic State Senators in California facing serious corruption allegations.  So far this year, a Democratic State Senator gets caught every month.  Senator Rod Wright was found guilty of voter fraud.  Amazing how a man can be convicted of voter fraud when Democrats routinely claim there is no such thing as voter fraud.  Senator Ron Caulderon was indicted on corruption charges.  Both Wright and Calderon are currently on paid leaves of absence.  They continue to get paid, for doing nothing, because that way Democrats retain total control of the legislature.

Now, with a third Democrat caught up in this crap, that may finally change.  It is so bad that even Democrats are demanding Yee’s resignation.  Democrats are dismayed that they will no longer be able to jam through wonderful liberal goals like immigration reform or more gun control.  They fear, gasp, actually have to negotiate with Republicans.

If the initial facts are accurate, this may be the worst yet.  Senator Yee, a gun control advocate running for California Secretary of State, was allegedly caught in an FBI sting trying to make money by helping gang bangers get their hands on illegal weapons.  Nice!  Let’s get the guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens so we can make more money furnishing them to criminals.

The question I have for Democrats in California is: “how bad does it need to get before you consider the possibility that you have a problem?”  There are currently 28 Democratic Senators in California and 3 of them have been either indicted or convicted.  That is incredible.  I am not pretending that Republicans are without sin, but Democrats have clearly raised this to a new level.

Let me be clear, we should not tolerate corruption in either Party.  I doubt that this is really about Democrat vs. Republican.  It is simply about power.  If Republicans had this type of power we would probably be reading about Republican crooks.  Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Democrats are paying a very high price for having all that power.  So are the taxpayers in California.

In the meantime, California truly is the Golden State.  Unfortunately it looks like most of that gold is lining the pockets of corrupt Democratic politicians.

TDM

Obama is nothing short of an international embarrassment.  We are paying a terrible price for electing someone so incapable and inexperienced to be President of the United States.

Following is a Washington Times News article on Obama’s conference with European Union leaders in Brussels:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-warns-nato-about-cutting-defense-spending/article/2546300

Incredibly, Obama complained about some NATO members cutting defense costs when he is cutting our own defense costs to the bone.  Then he says the following:

If we’ve got collective defense, it means that everybody’s got to chip in. And I have had some concerns about a diminished level of defense spending among some of our partners in NATO; not all, but many,” 

“The situation in Ukraine reminds us that our freedom isn’t free and we’ve got to be willing to pay for the assets, the personnel, the training that’s required to make sure that we have a credible NATO force and an effective deterrent force,”

Unbelievable!  At the same time Obama is cutting our defense costs to the bone, he is demanding that NATO increase spending.  It will be impossible for me to consider the phrase “freedom isn’t free” the same way again.  I can think of no better example of someone foolishly quoting words he does not begin to understand.

ABC’s Jon Karl asked President Obama if he was concerned over the decline of America’s influence in the world:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/03/25/abcs_jon_karl_challenges_obama_over_declining_influence_attacks_on_mitt_romney.html

Obama has replaced the Bush Doctrine with the Obama doctrine.  The Obama doctrine is that unless the U.S. is attacked directly, we must rely on leadership from the international community, which he defines as NATO or the UN, before taking any action. He obviously believe that the United States only has value as a member of the international community.  He ignores the fact that the internatiional community has only functioned effectively when led by the U.S.  One would think the Russian veto at the UN would have made this pretty obvious.  This is not just wrong it is dangerously delusional.

Then he finishes with a sentence that is remarkably incoherent.

The point is that…there are always going to be bad things that happen around the world and the United States is the most powerful nation in the world—understandably is look to for solutions to those problems…. There are going to be moments where…military action is appropriate. There are going to be sometimes where that’s not in the interest—national security interest—of the United States, or some of our partners, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to continue to make the effort or speak clearly about what we think is right and wrong and that’s what we’ve done.

How on earth can anyone take Obama seriously anymore?  Russia is just laughing at us.  But there is nothing funny about this.  Our enemies are almost certainly working on strategies to exploit the leadership vacuum in the United States over the next two and a half years.   What makes this even worse is that the only constitutional alternative is Joe Biden.

TDM

March is always somewhat of a silly month.  I was born in March, so there you go!  This year the weather has been ridiculous.  March is when people are seriously sick of winter.  This year March started out bad and it is ending badly.  By March 7 there were already 18 states recording record low temperatures for March.  In some cases those records went back to 1872.  Now it is March 25 and once again we are seeing record lows.  Boston is expected to drop down to 26 degrees which would break a record set back in 1888.  What happened to the ”in like a lion out like a lamb theory?”

In addition, this may not even be the last storm of the year.  What’s up with that?  I must admit it does make living here in Northern California look like a wise decision.  Winter basically phoned it in this year.  Our weather people get hysterical over the slim chance of rain.  Even clouds generate excitement.  Earlier this year there was a forecast for a couple of snowflakes.  The grandkids heard the breathless prediction of snow, so they got up early to take advantage.  It was about 40 degrees with no snow in sight.  So, our winter lasted about 15 minutes between 2:15 and 2:30 a.m.

This is not all good, because we are seriously short of water.  But I have to admit, few people here would swap weather with Michigan.  Just saying!

We should have expected this when Obama announced his plan to focus on combating global warming during the State of the Union address:

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/29/obama_during_state_of_the_union_climate_change_is_a_fact/

“We have to act with more urgency, because a changing climate is already harming western communities struggling with drought, and coastal cities dealing with floods.”

Obama really nailed that one.  We are now on record for having the coldest winter in over 100 years:

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/coldest-october-march-in-the-us-in-102-years/

Sometimes I wonder if God is just a little annoyed at the arrogance of people who think they can actually control our weather.   Of course the global warming people think that cold weather is caused by increased temperatures.  But then they believe a lot of other silly nonsense too!

In addition, the NCAA basketball tournament is just plain weird.  The Russians are invading Crimea and there is the mystery of flight MH370.  In this day and age how on earth do we lose an airliner?  If aliens were secretly visiting the planet and they watched the news broadcasts about flight MH370 they would probably write the entire planet off as hopelessly delusional.  In the meantime our President showed up in Europe with about 900 people in his entourage.  That wasn’t nearly enough to give him the courage to stand up to Vladimir Putin.  Obama was so anxious to prove Mitt Romney wrong that he tried to dismiss Russia as a “regional power.”  Putin is sending in Special Forces and tanks and Obama is fighting back with insults.  I am sure Putin is cringing in fear.

Enough already.  I am personally boycotting the rest of March and setting the calendar ahead to April.  April showers bring May flowers, except in California where it doesn’t actually rain in April.

TDM

This is a brief follow-up to my previous post.  I obviously do not know what happened to Malaysia Arline Flight 370.  Neither, apparently, does anyone else.  There are a lot of talking heads on TV telling about how sinister it was for someone, presumably the co-pilot, to plot a course in the computer for a change in heading without discussing this with air traffic control.  One problem is that the facts, including the timeline of events, keeps changing.  Another is that all of the experts start with the assumption that the pilots were aware of a serious problem.  Did anyone consider the possiblity that the pilots thought they were dealing with something minor, not worth reporting, and didn’t realize they had a serious problem until it was too late?

There are a lot of electrical appliances on an airliner that have nothing to do with the control system of the airliner.  I suspect most of us can remember some electrical appliance starting to smell like smoke.  There is not necessarily any significant fire or even flame.  I personally have been on commercial airliners where someone smelled smoke.  In one case it was a faulty coffee pot. In another case it was a faulty video projector.

In both cases the pilot did the same thing.  Someone reported smoke.  The stewardess reported this to the pilot.  He turned the plane over to the co-pilot and came back to investigate.  When he figured out the problem, he made sure it was fixed and returned to the cockpit.  I doubt that either pilot reported this to air traffic control.  But I would not be surprised if one or both of the pilots had asked the co-pilot to plot a course to the nearest alternative airport, as a precaution.  Is this really that far fetched?

If a pilot thought he had a minor problem, not impacting the operating system of the aircraft couldn’t that also explain the sequence of events?

This reminds me of a funny story.  A woman, well-known for her great cooking skills, was teaching her new daughter-in-law how to cook a roast.  Before putting the roast in the oven she cut about a ½ inch slice off each end.  The new daughter-in-law asked her why she did that.  The woman said:  “I’m not sure, but my mother always did that, so I just copied her.”  So, she called her mother and said:  “mom…why do you always cut off each end of the roast before putting it in the oven.”  Her mom said:  “I don’t know.  my mother always did that so I copied her.”  So someone called Grandmother and asked her about this.  “Grandma, why did you always cut off each end of the roast before putting it in the oven?”  Grandma replied:  “because my pan was too small.”  Sometimes the obvious is really obvious if you ask the right questions.

TDM