Regarding Ron Suskind's Confidence Men

Peggy Noonan's column in this past weekend's edition of the Wall Street Journal, entitled Amateur Hour at the White House, began with a reference to Ron Suskind's just-published book, Confidence Men.

She wrote,

"If Mr. Suskind is right, I have been wrong in my critiques of the president's economic policy. None of it was as bad as I said. It was much worse.



The most famous part of the book is the Larry Summers quote that he saw it as a "Home Alone" administration, with no grown-ups in charge. But there's more than that. Most of us remember the president as in a difficult position from day one: two wars and an economic crash, good luck with that. But Mr. Suskind recasts the picture.

He ran meetings as if they were afternoon talk shows. An unnamed adviser says the 2009 stimulus legislation was the result of "poor conceptualizing." Another: "We should have spent more time thinking about where the money was being spent, rather than simply that there was this hole of a certain size in the economy that needed to be filled, so fill it." Well, yes.



The decision to focus on health care was the president's own. It could have been even worse. Some staffers advised him—this was just after the American economy lost almost 600,000 jobs in one month—that he should focus on global warming.


Mr. Suskind's book is controversial, and some of his sources have accused him of misquoting them. The White House says Mr. Suskind talked to too many disgruntled former staffers. But he seems to have talked to a lot of gruntled ones, too. The overarching portrait of chaos, lack of intellectual depth and absence of political wisdom, from a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter at this paper, rings true."


It's worse than that. Last week stories ran regarding Anita Dunn and Christine Romer telling Wonderboy that the anti-female bias in the upper echelons of his administration was so bad it could trigger a lawsuit. Dunn denied the stories and claimed Suskind misquoted her.

Imagine how shocked she must have been when the New York Times wrote that Suskind played the tape of the interview and......he stands vindicated.

My question is, how arrogant must Wonderboy have been to allow such access to be granted, such stories to stream out of his White House. And just in time for the election cycle.

I'm not at all sure Noonan is correct in characterizing Summers' comments as the worst. But the coming weeks should bring more interesting tidbits along similar lines.

Wonderboy & The NEA

If you haven't seen this recently-aired commercial yet featuring Wonderboy and his NEA pals, it's well worth a view.

This pretty much eliminates any question that the First Rookie is anything but a post-partisan political hack. And that the NEA is run by bosses who don't care about teaching kids, or even the hard-working, dedicated teachers who pay them. They only care about raw political and financial power.

State of the Union Addresses

Last night was, of course, State of the Union night.

Wonderboy delivered what was described as a typical, boring, long-winded hour and a half monologue. I wasn't about to subject myself to such torture. His henchwoman, political operative Valerie Jarrett, pre-announced that he'd be talking about more spending, disguised as "investment."

Post-speech punditry this morning clearly identified the First Rookie's attempt to move to the center, pre-empt House Republicans on cutting spending, and generally aim for a Clintonesque triangulation for 2012 re-election.

No surprises there.

Here's Paul Ryan's official GOP response to Wonderboy's speech.

Ryan exhibits in this clip why he's considered an eventual potential Presidential candidate. Considering Bobby Jindahl's disastrous appearance last year, and rumors of Chris Christie's declining an invitation to be this year's respondent, the Wisconsin Congressman's consent might be considered an act of bravery.

That said, I think he does an excellent job concisely expressing the new, frugal message of Congressional Republicans.

Wonderboy Desecrates West Point

I would imagine that George Washington, U.S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower are all spinning in their graves at the thought of Wonderboy desecrating West Point by using- and I mean using- the Army's service college to deliver a speech about the result of his dithering over Afghanistan.

At this point, it really doesn't matter what he says. Early releases of his speech indicate that he will focus more on promising a quick withdrawal of the forces he is sending than on their dispatch, or what they will do.

The three men I mentioned earlier, two West Point graduates who became President, and the first President of the Republic, who designated the site as so important, would certainly have disapproved of our First Rookie's inability to trust his commanders, make a prompt decision, and show real commitment to the war in Afghanistan.

I would not have wanted to be in uniform serving our country, at West Point, to watch this travesty. It's a disgrace to our country's armed services and the men and women currently enrolled at West Point that Wonderboy used the post as yet another prop in his never-ending teleplay that is his administration.

Too bad the service men and women being sent to Afghanistan are not in a theatrical production, like the president's speech, but are risking their lives. They deserve so much more in a commander in chief than they are getting from Obama.

Anita Dunn: Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?

Two Fridays ago, I wrote this post discussing one editorialists' misunderstanding of Glenn Beck's hotline to the White House Communications Director.

Anita Dunn's early departure from this post was announced by the administration this week. They stressed that she had always been an 'acting' employee, and planned to leave by early next year.

So, no big deal.

Still, it seems that it is a big deal.

Whenever an administration makes a big deal out of saying something is not a big deal, it almost always really is.

In this case, Beck uncovered Dunn's devotion to Mao and general swagger about embracing socialists and communists. Liberals didn't think it all that remarkable, but many voters who thought they elected a moderate, centrist Democrat sure did.

So now Dunn is gone. Beck is unofficially credited with his second kill of Wonderboy's aides. First Van Jones. Now Anita Dunn.

Who will be next? Will he get to be an ace before Wonderboy leaves in 2013?

Now Beck is hamming it up, closing each program with the words,

"...and goodnight Mrs. Dunn, whereEVAH you are!"

Priceless.

Peggy Noonan Almost Hits the Mark

Peggy Noonan almost got it right this weekend in the Wall Street Journal when she opined,

"This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I'm not sure we're fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.

Part of the reason is that the problems- debt, spending, war- seem too big. But a larger part is that our government, from the White House through Congress and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths- spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. And in the long term everyone- well, not those in government, but most everyone else- seems to know that won't work. It's not a way out."

Noonan actually refutes herself by the end of that second paragraph. If she had simply added the phrase,

"by our increasingly professional, lifetime political class"

to that last sentence in the first paragraph, she'd have hit the mark exactly.

How is it she could write "well, not those in government, but most everyone else- seems to know that won't work," but claim we are dispirited and feel overwhelmed by our problems?

Nobody I know, with a brain, thinks our problems are overwhelming us.

They think the problems are overwhelming power-hungry professional pols who just want lifetime sinecures and more power.

Sensible Americans understand that we must spend less via government, trim entitlements, reverse 60 years of deficit spending, and focus on defining objectives for our current combat situations, then achieve the objectives.

These problems are far from insoluble by Americans who want to go about their business unhampered by government.

But for too-long-sitting Senators and Representatives with half a dozen years in office and dreams of as many more, or one of their state's Senate seats, those solutions don't sound like fun.

Less power. More accountability. Fewer lush promises made with other peoples' taxes.

Maybe Noonan's friends are too set in their government ways, and, by extension, so is Noonan.

She almost had it right.

But not quite.

She knows the right answer, but, like so many careerists in and around national politics, she can't bring herself to say it.

Term limits. Less federal power. No more professional politicians.

It's that simple. Solving that problem might be overwhelming. But not debt and spending. Not even war.

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.

The Ugly Americans Persecute Honduras

Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the Wall Street Journal's editorialist, wrote earlier this week, in her America's column, of how Wonderboy's administration is attempting to coerce Honduras to violate their own constitution.

In very clear prose, O'Grady explained that, in Honduras, any sitting president who attempts to run for a second term "automatically loses the privilege of his office."

Despite this very unvarnished constitutional consequence for what deposed president Zelaya did, Wonderboy is using every lever of influence available to his administration to attempt to restore the properly-deposed Honduran president to his office.

In this, our First Rookie has allied himself with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Great company, no?

According to O'Grady, visas for Hondurans visiting the US have been suspended indefinitely, and Wonderboy has threatened to suspend $135Mm in aid.

So much for our president's respect for the rule of law and the constitution of a friendly foreign power.

With friends like Wonderboy's administration, Honduras doesn't need any enemies, does it?

I cannot believe I am a citizen of a country doing this to Honduras. It makes me feel ashamed and embarrassed to be a voting citizen in Obama's America.

Wonderboy's Justice Department's Curious Recent Moves

Eric Holder's recent actions certainly are mystifying, as well as stomach-churning.

First, he unleashes a new special prosecutor on CIA employees whom both he and Wonderboy had previously assured would be safe from exactly such retribution-oriented witch hunts.

Then we learned yesterday that scandalized, grafted-up New Mexcio governor and Wonderboy pal/backer Bill Richardson had his federal probe quashed by someone in DOJ in Washington.

So much for ethics and "change you can believe in," eh?

I don't think you have to be cynical to view these two DOJ acts as a harbinger of a Nixonian type of justice being practiced. You know, enemies lists on one hand while turning a blind eye to legitimate crime on the other.

Oh, and let's not forget Holder's refusal to prosecute the Black Panther voter intimidation case in Philadelphia.

Together, these DOJ actions send a very bad signal to Americans. Real violation of laws are ignored, if the violators serve Wonderboy's ends.

But brave, legitimate actions by the intelligence community in defense of our country, simply because they occurred on Bush's watch, will be prosecuted as criminal behavior.

I guess it really does take an excess of liberal politics to teach naive American voters the price of handing all of the federal government power to liberal Democrats.

Let's hope all of this nauseating news from DOJ heaps more fuel on the fire to turn out Democratic majorities in Congress next year.

The Ultimate Nanny State of Wonderboy Prefigured

We all remember seeing the video of this woman during last year's campaign.



It became even scarier when I read this in Amity Schlaes' book, "The Forgotten Man," on page 251,

"A young black writer named Richard Wright repeated a few lines of a song he had heard,

'Roosevelt! You're my man
When the time comes I ain't got a cent
You buy my groceries And pay my rent!' "

It seems this ultimate liberal meal ticket is not a new idea, after all.

A New Obama Bumper Sticker You Can Believe In!

Last night, while driving on an errand, I saw an Obama bumper sticker on a car in front of me.

But it wasn't that stupid rainbow thing from the campaign.

No, this was different. And somehow not overtly positive.

Then I drew within reading range of the smaller letters, and here is what I saw

One Big Ass Mistake for America

Isn't it just the truth?

Maybe I will finally put one of Wonderboy's bumper stickers on my car.

About Those Death Panels: Wonderboy As Lawyer

Have you seen the video of Wonderboy's town hall meeting on healthcare?

He does something that is just what you'd expect a lawyer to do. It involves the so-called 'death panels.'

You see, buried deep in the bowels of the House healthcare bill are provisions for federal regulators to allocate medical care. Now, I can't recall exactly what the name of the commission is, but I can guarantee you it is not "Death Panel."

So when a colleague asked me how our First Rookie can stand in a town hall meeting and state so unequivocally that there are,

'no death panel that is going to deny care to your grandmother,'

he is, narrowly technically, correct.

But only a lawyer would think like that. Everyone else knows what the questioner meant. And that it is true.

It takes a true sophist, devoid of any principles or commitment to the truth, to so beguilingly lie, while technically telling not lying.

And that sophist is our president. A liar and a dissembler.

My colleague has said for a week now that someone should be cataloguing all Wonderboy's lies. I assured him that somewhere, someone is doing just that.

No doubt such a volume will be making an appearance by the next Congressional election cycle, as a reminder to voters everywhere of how they've been lied to by Wonderboy.

FDR & Wonderboy: The Scary Parallels

I've been reading Amity Schlaes' excellent book, "The Forgotten Man, A New History of The Great Depression."

In it, Ms. Schlaes carefully documents many of FDR's motivations and confused approaches to areas such as monetary policy and the gold standard, the NRA, TVA and the power industry.

Two things struck me about FDR's activities which seem to be shared by our current First Rookie.

First, FDR often had no clear conviction for his actions. For example, on monetary policy, he first disavowed leaving the gold standard, then formally severed the link, and, then, when this made gold price setting unable to affect the dollar's value, he returned the dollar to gold convertibility, albeit at a much higher $35/ounce, rather than the $20/ounce or so it had once held.

Schlaes' description of FDR's willy-nilly changes of mind to his own representatives to a gold conference he convened in London would be funny, if it were not so sad.

The other aspect of Roosevelt's activities which I had not realized was that the entire NRA was accomplished by executive orders. Congress had no say whatsoever in the autocratic agency which attempted to organize and regulate the entire US economy. Schlaes notes that, as of the mid-1930s, the NRA's regulations ran to some 10,000 pages, more than the entire Federal Register from the Republic's founding, in 1789, to that time.

One gets the sense that Wonderboy is also devoid of any clear sense of economic direction in his own deliberations. He demands a nearly-$800B stimulus bill, all to be borrowed, then claims his healthcare bill will not increase the deficit.

Too, as FDR did with his executive orders, Wonderboy has appointed a huge array of 'czars,' and is running the auto sector and supporting banks without meaningful Congressional oversight.

It's scary how much of FDR's approaches and overall game plan of explicit socialization our current president seems to have borrowed.

But, in contrast, there's hope, as well. Schlaes details how the tide eventually turned against FDR, as I will relate in an upcoming post.

Wonderboy Inflames Racial Tensions

The story involving Wonderboy and the run in between police and a Harvard professor in Cambridge is just too good to be true, isn't it?

Mr. post-partisan and racial healing criticized police for doing their job, and instinctively sided with the black person in the case.

I guess Wonderboy is showing us how it's done in the new America, isn't he?

Then, to add insult to injury, after putting his foot in his own mouth, he alleged that, because his statements caused such an uproar, it proves that racial tensions still exist.

Just incredible. This guy can't let well enough alone and simply believe in peoples' inherent goodness.

As president, his comments make extra waves, but our First Rookie still thinks he can serve via sound bites, speeches and press conferences. I don't think the real gravity of office has hit him yet.

Maybe it never will.

Liberal Wishful Thinking

Democratic operative and one-time Humphrey aide Ted Van Dyck wrote a rather pathetic, yet revealing piece in the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

Entitled, "Obama Needs to 'Reset' His Presidency,' Van Dyke enumerates the ways in which Obama has basically behaved differently than he promised when on the campaign trail, as well as differently than those Democratic icons to which he likes to compare himself, Roosevelt and Johnson.

Specifically, Van Dyke notes how patient and careful FDR and LBJ were in building some consensus and bi-partisan compromises in their landmark legislations. Wonderboy, by contrast, only a few hours after Van Dyke's editorial was published, again demanded action on healthcare by the August Congressional recess.

The pathetic part of the piece is seen in the title. No president 'resets' his presidency. The two-termers gut it out and overcome mistakes, but they basically continue being who they are. Either the opposition is too weak, the people approve, or are gullible, but a second term rewards inflexibility.

The ones that are simply wrong-headed and either meet capable opposition, or are seen to be out of step with the situation, like Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover, are not re-elected.

He demonstrates his sensibility with these initial passages,

"You restored hope to millions- including me- who had been demoralized by the political polarization that characterized the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

The first warning signals for me came with your acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. In it, you stressed domestic initiatives that clearly were nonstarters in the already shrinking economy.

I had greater concern when you staffed your administration and White House with a large number of Clinton administration retreads."

Van Dyke continues in this vein, contrasting how FDR and LBJ worked with how Wonderboy is using strong-arm tactics, on a much lower margin of victory than the former, to pass questionable legislation with far-reaching implications for American society.

Van Dyke's suggestions are actually quite good- for another candidate. Maybe because Humphrey lost his election, Van Dyke doesn't have actual Oval Office experience, and naively believes his advice would matter.

Cutting back proposals, appearing in the media less often, and following through on his campaign promises are good ideas, but our First Rookie won't be considering any of them. They would represent admissions of mistakes and defeat, which presidents don't historically do on a large-scale.

I suppose, like Carter, Obama could become sufficiently weak, even with his party controlling both Houses, to attract an opposing nominee candidate from his own party in 2012, much like Teddy Kennedy did in 1980.

Failing that, the more Wonderboy steers a course away from Van Dyke's useful recommendations, the greater the chance of a GOP candidate taking up residence in the White House come January, 2013.

Bill Cosby Would Be a Better President

I've contended in prior posts that our current president is extremely dangerous because he has no significant life experience with which to have become prepared for the office.

Yes, he's old enough. He might have been born in the US, but we're still not sure, because he's never released a certified copy of a state birth certificate from a US state.

I've also contended, not alone, that Wonderboy was elected primarily by a margin of guilty, wealthy white voters who didn't take his campaign promises of wealth redistribution seriously, but felt good voting for a respectable, educated and well-spoken black.

As I watch our First Rookie mess up energy, the auto sector, health care, the value of the dollar and our deficit, I can't help thinking that there was a much, much better black man for the job.

Bill Cosby.

Yes, I really mean it. Bill Cosby.

There are many reasons why I honestly would have seriously considered voting for Cosby, rather than even McCain last fall.

First, Cosby has had nothing, if not plenty of real world experience and accomplishments. He was a hugely successful standup comic before the color line was dissolved. Everyone loved Cosby. He was brilliant.

He went on to co-star in "I Spy," in the mid-1960s. His was probably the first network television series to so feature a black. Later, he spun off his "Fat Albert" character into a children's cartoon program.

Cosby did various movie roles, but really became mainstream in the 1980s when he conceived of the "The Cosby Show" featuring himself as Dr. Heathcliffe Huxtable.

Even that, however, wasn't his zenith, in my opinion. It was in 1992 that Cosby tried to buy NBC. At about that time, Cosby began to speak out more forcefully against 'ebonics,' the so-called 'black english,' and for blacks to be responsible for behaving not as victims in society.

I can't conceive of Cosby engaging in such empty, meaningless rhetoric while ramming society-changing legislation through Congress.

Cosby, far more than Wonderboy, has relevant life experience in areas that connect him to the electorate. He's been a creative entertainer and businessman. He's excelled in many pursuits and crossed/broke the race barrier long ago.

Does Cosby have conservative values and principles? Probably the former, but less so the latter. Still, as a black liberal, he'd be a much better choice than our current failure in the Oval Office.

If we were going to elect a celebrity black president, why shouldn't we have gone for the real thing? Someone who accomplished so much on his own, rather than as a privileged, coddled minority?

Our country would be so much better off with a president, irrespective of color, who had a visceral appreciation for hard work, self-made, honest success, and a proven ability to understand and connect with the American populace.

A Continuing Question

As I drove home yesterday through central Pennsylvania, a billboard appeared with this simple message:

WHERE'S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE?

It took me a second to realize the context. And I have to agree, this important Constitutional qualification is still murky in Wonderboy's case.

Wouldn't you think, if there were no issue, that his handlers would have blasted a certified copy all over the media last summer? Instead, the Secretary of State of Hawaii mumbled about how they couldn't release it for privacy reasons. We were assured that there is one, but never actually saw it.

This so-called president remains illegitimate so long as this question goes unanswered.

Like so many other important questions, Wonderboy and his handlers deflect it with an arrogance meant to belittle those asking for this simple proof of birth in the US.

Right after I realized the meaning of the billboard, I quickly asked myself why Pennsylvania went for Obama in the last election. It's clearly a state with many residents who share virtually no values with our current president.

The birth certificate billboard came amidst several for guns and ammunition.

How in the world could a state full of people referred to by Wonderboy derisively as 'clinging to their guns and religion' have voted for him?

How different would things be now if they had not?

"Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone"

Funny, isn't it, how we are being led into expensive, rationed universal healthcare by a smoker?

That's right. Wonderboy smokes- cigars and cigarettes, if I recall.

It's kept quietly under wraps, of course, but some mentions of this filthy, unhealthy habit leaked out during the campaign last summer.

Ironic, isn't it?

A person afflicted with one of the most expensive long-term habits, in terms of eventual disease, is telling us all to let the government manage their healthcare to cut costs.

Maybe Wonderboy can get his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, to remind him of the biblical verse alluded to in the title of this post?

No, that's probably unlikely, because that would involve Wright in something positive about religion.

On Universal Healthcare and System Design

Wonderboy's proposals, albeit hopelessly and dangerously vague, for universal healthcare got me thinking this morning about systems design.

I've had a fairly extensive career in large- and small- organizations. I worked for AT&T when it was a million people strong. I've worked in a small hedge fund shop of less than a dozen people.

In my AT&T and Chase Manhattan days, I was involved in plenty of projects which featured systems design, operation or redesign.

While not a veteran IT systems designer, I've had a fair amount of experience with general systems design involving people, organizations, processes, goals, etc.

From all of that, I've learned a few things.

One is, systems have to be designed to the least-competent people's level, because it's rare that systems end up being operated by geniuses.

Another, of course, is something sensibly taught in most IT management courses- start with pilot projects and pilot groups. Be honest and open about what works and what doesn't. I did pilot strategy assessment projects with product managers at AT&T. They were a small, highly-motivated, bright group of people. Even so, we changed things in the process of completing the pilot. It wasn't a rubber stamp exercise.

Finally, before designing a mega-system, it's a really good idea for the chief visionary/architect to have completed at least one smaller system design and implementation prior to 'the big one.'

Entire books, like Tracy Kidder's famous "Soul of a New Machine," have been written about the process. It's not a trivial undertaking.

Which brings me, of course, to Wonderboy's brand spanking new mega-project, universal healthcare.

Our First Rookie hasn't, to my knowledge, designed and implemented an extensive system before. As I understand it, he's a lawyer by trade, after having drugged his way through Columbia undergrad. He then 'organized' communities.

Nothing so far to suggest deep, extensive experience with even medium-scale systems design and development.

Now, add to this the fact that there are 50 states.

Doesn't it seem reasonable to insist that the Democrats, led by Wonderboy, should have a more-experienced systems designer doing universal healthcare? And perhaps one of the more zealous liberal Democratic Senators from say, New York, California or Illinois should visit the new mega-system on their state for, oh, say four or five years before we evaluate it?

Of course, you could look at the failed TennesseeCare program which had to be scrapped. Or the ailing and failing, ever-more expensive program in Massachusetts, unwisely fathered by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Or the California system that has engulfed the state's budget.

My point is pretty clear, though, isn't it? If something is so important, according to Wonderboy, as to affect even US business competitiveness, which has yet to be proven, isn't it sufficiently important to be done according to the 'best practices' which our president promises to use in the new healthcare system?

That would mean, for a start, naming a confirmed cabinet official with systems design and implementation experience to devise the new program, then choose one or two states on which to test it for several years.

Not pass a single, untested omnibus bill, authored by inexperienced (in systems design) Congressmen, egged on by equally an inexperienced president, to be simply unleashed on the nation without any testing?

This violates every best practice ever conceived. It's a disgrace to our nation.

Obama Fires Inspector General

Gerald Walpin, an Inspector General recently tasked to investigate Obama supporter, former NBA player and Sacramento, California Democratic mayor, Kevin Johnson. An article reporting on the firing may be found here.

A New York Post piece explained the administration's position, reporting,

"We also highlighted numerous questions and further investigation they needed to conduct, including the fact that they had not done an audit to establish how much AmeriCorps money was actually misspent," Acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence Brown said in an April 29 letter to the federal counsel of inspectors general.

Walpin's office made repeated public comments just before the Sacramento mayoral election, prompting the U.S. attorney's office to inform the media that it did not intend to file any criminal charges.

The U.S. attorney's office reached a settlement in the matter. Brown cited press accounts that said Johnson and the nonprofit would repay half of nearly $850,000 in grants it received."

However, that passage makes very clear that Johnson was mishandling the funds.

On the other side of the issue, the Fox News article notes,

"Obama's move follows an investigation by IG Gerald Walpin of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is an Obama supporter and former NBA basketball star, into the misuse of federal grants by a nonprofit education group that Johnson headed.

The president didn't offer any more explanation, but White House Counsel Gregory Craig, in a letter to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, cited the U.S. attorney's criticism of Walpin to an integrity committee for inspectors general.

Alan Solomont, a Democrat and the board chairman of the government-run corporation, and Stephen Goldsmith, a Republican and the board's vice chair, said they strongly endorsed Obama's decision."

It's pretty clear that this is a classic case of scandal at a government-funded agency which is striking someone close to a sitting president. The agency's heads of course want the IG canned. The target, a Democratic mayor close to the president, wants help quashing the developing investigation.

Despite his many promises of running an administration with heretofore-unapproached ethical standards, and transparency, Wonderboy is covering up scandal and is silent on the reasons. While also violating the law which is in place precisely to prevent this sort of cashiering of IG's for doing their job and uncovering abuses of funds which are embarrassing to an administration.

Hopefully, this story will blossom, rather than die. And develop into a major scandal for the administration, Johnson, and Americorps.