Archive for 2009

MARK STEYN on William Forstchen’s One Second After. Why worry about an EMP attack? “So it wipes out your bank accounts. What’s in there? I mean, really. The average American household is carrying $121,953 in personal debt. What would be so bad if something goofy happened and all the meters got reset to zero? And Joe Schmoe’s credit card debt is as nothing compared to what the government’s signed him up for. . . . When I first heard about EMP a few years back, the big worry was that in a split-second it would vaporize trillions of dollars of wealth. From the perspective of 2009, vaporizing trillions of dollars of debt has something to commend it.”

HOPE AND CHANGE: Obama fires Americorps Inspector General who investigated friend:

President Barack Obama says he has lost confidence in the inspector general who investigates AmeriCorps and other national service programs and has told Congress he is removing him from the position.

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 IG found that Johnson, a former all-star point guard for the Phoenix Suns, had used AmeriCorps grants to pay volunteers to engage in school-board political activities, run personal errands for Johnson and even wash his car.

Sounds kinda fishy to me. (Via Gateway Pundit).

UPDATE: More from Byron York:

I’ve been trying to discover the real reason for Obama’s move, and it’s still not clear. I’m told that it could be a combination of the normal tensions that surround any inspector general’s office, or the president’s desire to get his own people in IG positions, or a dispute over a particular investigation. “Bottom line,” one source wrote, “getting rid of a tough, Republican-appointed IG who has been aggressively going after waste and fraud gives Obama a chance to replace that IG with a more compliant team player.”

I’m also told that a number of inspectors general around the government have been expressing concerns to Congress recently about threats to their independence. . . . Bottom line: The AmeriCorps IG accuses prominent Obama supporter of misusing AmeriCorps grant money. Prominent Obama supporter has to pay back more than $400,000 of that grant money. Obama fires AmeriCorps IG.

Under a Republican President, this would be a huge scandal.

HOPE AND CHANGE: America: Now $8-to-$14 Trillion Poorer. “The American people are now worth about what they were worth in 2004, but the value keeps dropping. And there are reasons to think the value can go a lot lower.”

JESSE WALKER ON BLOOD LIBELS. “The effect isn’t to make right-wing terror attacks less likely. It’s to make it easier to smear nonviolent, noncriminal figures on the right, just as the most substantial effect of a red scare was to make it easier to smear nonviolent, noncriminal figures on the left. The fact that communist spies really existed didn’t justify Joseph McCarthy’s antics, and the fact that armed extremists really exist doesn’t justify the Department of Homeland Security’s report.” If the Holocaust Museum shooting had been by a Muslim, we’d be hearing more calls for nuance. And if the shooter had been gay, the usual suspects would be blaming Carrie Prejean. . . .

THEY’RE HAVING A FUND-RAISING DRIVE OVER AT NRO. I don’t do those here, but please consider subscribing to PJTV. I’d appreciate it, as they work on my new “virtual studio” for next week. (Bumped).

TIM BLAIR: “Being so very much smarter than Sarah Palin, you’d think Letterman and his writers and his producers would have been able to work out the difference between one Palin daughter and another. I’m pretty sure Sarah Palin can tell them apart, but the combined brains of Letterman’s CBS team evidently cannot. Nor will they acknowledge their error, if error it was.”

“IF YOU STRIKE ME DOWN, I SHALL BECOME MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE:” New Miss California: Marriage Is Between a Man and a Woman. “Tami Farrell, the newly crowned beauty queen who is replacing the ousted Carrie Prejean as Miss California, apparently holds the same view as her predecessor, Carrie Prejean, that marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

Plus, Perez Hilton’s nightmare.