Wonderboy Cements His Fate As The New Jimmy Carter

I awoke this morning to what I thought was a faux news story on the radio. Wonderboy had been named as the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize!

Indeed, this truly cements him as Jimmy Carter's hapless heir and protege in weakening America's economy and defense capabilities.

Not to mention that, once again, the focus is on words and promises, not actions. And, of course, since the Nobel committee routinely uses prizes such as those for peace and literature to chide and lecture America.

This time is no exception. Now that a gullible, weak, clueless American president is running around the globe apologizing for past actions by our country and promising not to act in our own self-interest, the global liberal community wants to be sure to reward such absurd behavior.

How ridiculous is it that someone who has done nothing more than give a few speeches and allowed Iran to proceed on its plans to develop a nuclear weapon can possibly, in any sane world, be judged to have promoted "peace?"

Only in some bizarro world inhabited by myopic, dreamy uber-liberals.

For me, this is actually a good predictor of the coming woes for the Democratic party in Congress, and Wonderboy's own defeat in 2012. I don't think I'm by any means in the minority of Americans who sense betrayal and the weakening of America's defenses when a president is so recognized by the liberals on the Nobel committee.

More Lies From Max Baucus

Today's release of the latest CBO "scoring" of Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee health care bill had the chairman grinning, claiming the bill is "paid for."

Yeah, right. More lies from Washington. More lies from Baucus.

Baucus' bill and statements are misleading on so many levels.

For example, Karl Rove pointed out the following in just a few minutes on Sean Hannity's Fox News program last night.

-The current Senate bill mandates huge taxes on so-called "Cadillac" health care plans. Many people possessing these plans are union workers, and the House has vowed that it will not tax these plans. So you either have taxes that Wonderboy said won't be levied, or a bill that suddenly is about $200B more in the red.

-The so-called 10-year scoring back loads "benefits," but front loads taxes, so the true spending is not counted, it being in further out years beyond the initial ten years.

-The usual, mythical cuts in current Medicare "waste and fraud" are used to pay for hundreds of billions of dollars of the bill's expenses. Since Congress has never seen fit to actually reduce any of this "waste and fraud," it is simply not credible that, now, it will vanish, to fund this bill.

-This bill is only a Senate markup. It is calculated to simply make it out of the Senate and into conference with the House. The true, final bill will bear little resemblance to this one, so the CBO estimate won't really be relevant next month.

But even with all these financial considerations, this bill is wrong on some basics.

As with all the Democratic health care proposals, they ignore the easy, low-cost, non-system-wrecking options which include: provide tax preferenced health care premium treatment to all; allow interstate marketing of health insurance; institute tort reform to lower costs of defensive medicine; remove mandates, so people can buy precisely the insurance they desire.

None of these appear anywhere in Baucus' useless bill. Instead, it's a major grab for federal power to displace personal choice and liberty.

Baucus and the other Senate Democrats, and any Republican who votes for this pig, should be voted out of office.

David Letterman's Coming Revelations

I chanced to see some of Fox News' Geraldo Rivera's program over the weekend. Typically, I can't stand Geraldo. But I was more or less semi-comatose when the program came on, recovering from a daunting, hilly afternoon bicycle ride.

The program's guest was Gerald Shargel, the attorney for alleged David Letterman extortionist, Joe Holderman. I can't recall his name, but he was apparently the guy who gave convicted mobster John Gotti the moniker "teflon don."

This New York Post article hints at what is in store for the gap-toothed late night talk show host. Shargel's attitude on Sunday evening was a great deal more promising than even that article could capture.

Among Shargel's hints were that Letterman seems to have indulged in a massive illusion by way of confession, in order to draw attention away from the identities of the people with whom he had sex. And Shargel said, over and over, that he believes, from what he has seen, that the key to Letterman's behavior are the identities of the people with whom he has had sex. Shargel didn't mention gender, so it could be many possibilities, any or all of which could turn people against Letterman.

Shargel was really adamnant that, having reviewed the evidence thus far, he is pretty sure there's quite a bit more to this story than what Letterman carefully released on his show. For example, Shargel asked, why did Letterman's attorney only wear a wire to the last meeting with Shargel, and not all of them? What was said in the prior meetings that Letterman and his lawyer did not want on tape?

Now, all of this is in the offing, and really not about politics. Yet.

But as I heard Letterman's latest confession about what one does when one hurts someone, and how much "work" he has "cut out" for himself to regain the good graces of his wife, I cannot help recalling the comedian's vicious attacks on Sarah Palin.

Letterman sure was happy to be a liberal attack dog when he was devoid of any sins. It's easy to rip into others and make fun of them when you seem unassailable.

And, in the opening days of the Letterman case, this seemed to continue to be true. Letterman easily deflected his sexual infidelities, winking and interspersing his confessions with laugh lines, the better to try to insinuate that everybody does this.

Karma has a funny way of calling in unexpected ways. I think Letterman is about to discover this.

It could well be that all the invective and bile which he spewed at and over Palin and her family is about to be revisited upon him tenfold.

Justice can be quite impartial at times. Especially when it's not the variety that comes from a court verdict, but, instead, the process of being put through public scrutiny attendant upon a court case.

The Roman Polanski Litmus Test

The recent arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland on flight charges stemming from his admission of guilt in the rape of a 13 year old girl some thirty years ago has presented Wonderboy's administration with a dilemma.

As a socialist and extreme liberal, the First Rookie probably, naturally, wants to instruct his Justice Department to let the matter drop. After all, if the US doesn't follow through with extradition, the situation resolves by Polanski slipping back into France and taking more care in his future travels.

But such an action by the president would, by now, further infuriate the independent voters in the broad middle of the country. Even the very liberal NPR reporter Cokie Roberts was seen in a video clip on Bill O'Reilly's program last night saying of Polanski, simply,

"Just take him out and shoot him."

The extensive coverage of the situation in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal indicated that not every Hollywood director is backing the Polish-born fugitive.

Of course, if Wonderboy allows Justice to follow through and return Polanski to face charges of flight, and whatever sentence is waiting for his actual admission of rape, liberals will have another reason to feel duped and cheated by voting for the current president.

What to do, indeed?

This one is a peculiar challenge for the inexperienced Rookie. It's a simple matter of making a binary decision. Either bring Polanski back, or not.

There's really no wiggle room, and enough days have passed for everyone who will care to have become aware of the situation.

Should be fascinating to watch this one play out.

Rio's & US Taxpayers' Gain: The 2016 Olympics

It looks like Wonderboy confidant and aide Valerie Jarrett will have to find a new source of retirement income.

With the IOC's recent choice of Rio de Janiero for the 2016 Summer Olympics, Chicago's bid for the firehose of cash with which to pay off all and sundry connected to Dick Daley's machine ran out of gas. Thus, slumlord Jarrett, and her friends, won't be able to skim large amounts of that Olympic financial stream for themselves and their friends in government, labor and who knows elsewhere.

The manner in which Chicago lost its bid was also extremely humiliating. The US city was the first one dropped, getting only 18 votes out of 95 or so in the first round.

So much for Wonderboy personally travelling the globe to repudiate his predecessor's world view and apologize for so many great American accomplishments.

What the First Rookie got from the peanut gallery in Copenhagen was a swift, hard kick in the teeth. And you paid for it- the two jets, Michelle and her makeup artists, etc.

In all honesty, if Olympic games are to continue to be held around the world, then it was way past time to hold a game on the South American continent.

On the other hand, Rio has its hands full now. I was cycling with an Argentinian-born friend yesterday who spent considerable time in Rio while earning her PhD in bio-chemistry. She remarked that Rio has "a lot of cleaning up to do" if they are ever to get the city presentable for the world stage that is the Olympics.

Somehow, too, I suspect that graft and corruption in Rio will certainly rival that of Chicago. God knows how much they will skim off of the notional spending for the Games. But at least that's not the US taxpayers' concern, anymore. We dodged that bullet when Chicago was dissed in the first round vote.

There is, however, at least for me, a surreal quality to the age-old idea of a new venue for the Games every two years.

In a week when Indonesia and Samoa were devastated by an earthquake, killing thousands and causing billions of dollars of damage, it seems extravagant and decadent for the IOC to be designating some city to incur debt of additional billions to throw an athletic-centric party for two weeks nearly a decade from now.

For some years, I've had the following notion. Why not establish two permanent sites, one each for Winter and Summer Olympic Games, in two relatively calm, smaller countries? The IOC could issue bonds to fund the capital costs, in conjunction with the host countries, using expected revenues over the coming decades to pay the indebtedness.

Meanwhile, the host countries would be responsible for performing the maintenance on the facilities, and supply the quadrennial labor pool to operate the Games.

Athletic records would be more comparable, since they would be set in the same venue. Recurring logistical headaches, such as housing, security and transportation would have fixed solutions, improvements to which would continue to bring benefits to each subsequent Olympics. We could also expect a sort of learning curve effect on the relative efficiency and costs of operating the Games each time, since so much about them would remain the same.

Individual cities across the world could still bid to host each year's Games, in effect becoming the manager for that event, undertaking to choose the variable athletic events, arrange media coverage, and various other ceremonial events.

Gate and media receipts would be shared between the facilities/country, IOC and hosting city according to a fixed formula, assuring funding to maintain and improve the facilities and service the debt.

How many billions would be saved by this arrangement? Money that certainly could be better-used for so many causes that tug at the heartstrings of viewers of natural disasters like last week's quake.

It simply seems silly and wasteful to me to continue to see billions wasted every two years on Olympic Games, when it would be so much easier to just establish two permanent venues.

Senate Continues Funding John Murtha's Private Airport

Last Tuesday's Wall Street Journal carried an unbelievable editorial concerning the Senate's continuation of funding for Pennsylvania Democratic Representative John Murtha's private airport in Johnstown, PA.

South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint proposed an amendment to cease federal funding of the Pennsylvanian's boondoggle. Incredibly, it was defeated by a vote of 53-47, with Republicans Kit Bond (MO) and George Voinovich (O) voting against DeMint's amendment.

The Journal quotes DeMint as pleading,

"If we can't cut funding for this project, we can't cut anything in Washington."

So true. It's not like Murtha is even a Senator. But he evidently has enough chits collected among his own party's Senators, and, for some inexplicable reason, retiring Republican Senators Bond and Voinovich, as well, to manage to escape the budgetary knife.

For the record, the airport, with its three daily commercial flights- all to D.C.- has received in excess of $150MM over the last twenty years. Tickets for the flights carry an average $100 subsidy, paid for, of course, by you, the taxpayer.

The airport boasts an $8.5MM radar system that has never been used, and even managed to get $800,000 of so-called stimulus money earlier this year.

As the Journal noted, this 'airport in the middle of nowhere' may well become the Democrat's version of the infamous Republican "bridge to nowhere" of several election cycles ago.

Let's hope so. And maybe the end of Murtha's tenure, too.