ASTONISHING THEM WITH HIS INGRATITUDE: Obama Shocks the Elites:

It would be funny if the stakes — the future direction of this country for many years to come — weren’t so high.

It’s still hard not to feel just a bit of schadenfreude watching many of Barack Obama’s supporters, particularly those who are among the well-positioned or financially well-off, fidget, whine, and moan as they discover what those of us who actually researched and studied the guy before the election knew about him.

Indeed.

COLLEGE DEBT SO CRUSHING graduate wishes he’d gone to prison instead. Well, it’s easier to get your prison sentence cut than to get out of student loan debt. On the other hand, maybe he should have studied harder in those accounting classes . . . .

VIDEO: Arizona State snubs Obama.

DAYDREAMING: Good for your brain!

WHY APPLE IS DOOMED without Steve Jobs.

AUTOBLOG: Chrysler to cut loose 800 dealers on Thursday? Ouch.

FROM MICHAEL YON: More on training with the Gurkhas.

IN THE MAIL: Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. From William Gurstelle, the author of Backyard Ballistics.

MEDICARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY ARE GOING BROKE: Phil Bowermaster has a solution.

GEE, DO YOU THINK? Dems Wrong to Block Ethics Inquiry:

Last month, four respected public-interest groups – Democracy 21, Common Cause, Public Citizen and U.S. PIRG – called on the House ethics committee to launch an inquiry into whether campaign contributions from the lobbying firm PMA Group, its employees and clients improperly influenced Democratic lawmakers in deciding whether to fund various projects.

PMA’s offices were raided by the FBI last year and its political action committee records seized. Since then, there has been speculation that the raid involved influential Democratic members of Congress, prompting Republicans to call for an investigation.

But the speculation goes beyond partisan sniping. Of particular interest is PMA’s relationship to Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., head of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., and Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind. In 2007 and 2008, the three congressmen were largely responsible for directing $137 million in earmarks to defense contractors who had hired PMA to lobby for them. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Murtha has collected $2.37 million in political donations from PMA lobbyists and its client firms over the past two decades, while Visclosky has gotten $1.36 million and Moran, $997,348.

House ethics rules prohibit doling out earmarks in exchange for political contributions, and the FBI raid of PMA has piqued public interest as to whether those rules were violated.

Yet on Tuesday, the House voted 215-182 against a Republican resolution to initiate a House ethics committee inquiry. The vote was not strictly partisan – 29 Democrats went against their leadership in favor of an investigation.

But not enough did. As the editorial suggests, they’re probably afraid of what an investigation will turn up.

RIDING the Booty Train.

Plus, from the comments: “Now if Obama would just follow Europe’s direction TODAY, and not Europe’s direction of 40 years ago, then we’d be making progress.”

PJTV: BROKE: Washington Comes Clean on Social Security’s Dirty Secret. Well, semi-clean.

AFTER DOING SUCH A BANG-UP JOB WITH EVERYTHING ELSE: Treasury Asks For Control of Derivatives Market.

FORGET GOING GALT, here’s another guy who’s gone Geithner: “Move over, Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer, Charles Rangel, Kathleen Sebelius, and Hilda Solis: There’s a new tax cheat making headlines! According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Stroger owes the IRS nearly $12,000 in unpaid taxes. This development is especially delicious considering Stoger’s decision earlier this week to block a measure aimed at relieving Chicagoans’ tax burden. He vetoed a rollback of an unpopular sales tax hike that pushed the Cook County rate to 10.25 percent, the highest in the nation.”

THINGS THAT DON’T SUCK: A long time ago I mentioned my inexpensive Sennheiser PX-100 headphones, with which I replaced the lame earbuds my iPod came with. It’s now been going on 5 years, and they still work perfectly. (I had doubts about the ruggedness of their folding setup, but it’s held up fine). In fact, the Insta-Daughter has permanently “borrowed” them for her iPod, so I just bought another pair. Speaking of which, I just upgraded to a new iPod Classic and I like it a lot. To my surprise, it’s actually not bad watching videos on it, too. I downloaded a Star Trek episode (“I, Mudd” — mentioned here the other day) and it was quite watchable.

Note that there’s a closed-ear version of the Sennheisers, too, but I haven’t tried that one out. The reviews are decent, though.

MEDIA HYPOCRISY OF THE FIRST ORDER: Bankrupt Tribune gives bonuses after berating AIG:

Two months after denouncing a troubled financial company for doling out hefty management bonuses, a bankrupt news media company is doing the same thing.

“Money for nothing?” blared a Chicago Tribune editorial in mid-March, responding to news that American International Group Inc. planned to give $450 million in bonuses to its top executives during a very public federal bailout.

But this week, the Tribune Co. – which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant and other dailies, along with 23 TV stations – received permission from a Delaware bankruptcy judge to pay out $13.3 million in bonuses to some 700 local and corporate managers.

The payouts come as $2.7 million in severance pay to 68 employees who lost their jobs last year remains frozen.

Funny how these media companies seldom live up to their own professed standards of corporate behavior.

THE GATHERING STORM on Social Security and Medicare.

A BAD REVIEW FOR KEITH OLBERMANN: “Not his ugliest performance ever — not even his ugliest with respect to Miss Cali — but possibly his most gutless. . . . What this segment really is, although Somerby doesn’t say so, is Olby’s version of a Two Minutes Hate.” Except dragged out for seven. . . . Much more from Bob Somerby. “Olbermann’s a woman-trasher—a genuine nut on this matter. And no, we hate to break the news: He doesn’t do ‘progressive’ television. He seems to do work designed to capture the eyeballs of well-meaning young liberals. And for some ungodly reason, he does television which has long been devoted to the ridicule of women’s brains and bodies. . . . Where are the progressives? Oh, we forgot! They’re dragging their knuckles and sucking their thumbs, watching a 50-year-old nutcase get his eternal jollies. And drive his rating among the demo, putting millions of bucks in his pants. In this world, Barry doesn’t exist. You see, Barry is both black and male, and Keith doesn’t plan to enter such realms. For years, he has pimped you trash about women’s dumbness, while progressives have sat there and stared.”

ANOTHER PHONY ANTIWAR VETERAN: “The leader of a statewide veterans group who fought for homeless veterans in Colorado Springs was in the Denver County jail on Wednesday, unmasked as a former psychiatric patient who posed as a wounded Marine officer and 9/11 survivor. . . . Garett Reppenhagen, a past chairman of the local chapter of Iraq Veterans against the War, said he saw Strandlof collecting money for CVA during an antiwar poetry reading at Poor Richard’s Bookstore in downtown Colorado Springs, telling donors it would be used for shipping care packages to men and women serving abroad. It’s unclear if that money ever made it out of Strandlof’s pocket.” It’s pretty much a metaphor. . . .

DARREN HUTCHINSON: Change! “How does the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects in the United States, as opposed to Guantanamo Bay, represent an improvement over the Bush administration’s policies?”

COULD BE EMBARRASSING FOR HIS “FRIENDS:” Report: SEC may charge Angelo Mozilo with fraud.

The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission has decided to recommend that the agency bring civil fraud charges against Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp., according to a published report Wednesday.

Those “friends” from the Countrywide sweetheart loan scandal include Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Richard Holbrooke, and Donna Shalala, among others.

HEH: Dems Lack Waterboarding “Exit Strategy.”

CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT, I say it’s just prehistoric porn. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

OUCH: “P.S.: You misspelled ‘conscience.'”

Plus, the “fat, balding, sweaty little guy” turns out to be Perez Hilton. Ouch, again.

HEH:

Remember how the Reagan administration became a laughingstock for allegedly trying to classify ketchup as a vegetable?

This week, the Obama administration warned that Cheerios are a drug.

On the bright side for Obama, at least it’s not a Jimmy Carter comparison, this time . . . .

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman says this is bullshit. I say it’s at least as fair as the ketchup/vegetable thing. Your call.